5 Writing Systems in 60 Seconds #language #linguistics

Do you know the five main types of writing systems used in the world's languages? Watch this short to find out! If you have a guess, put it in the comments! Whether you're making a constructed language or are interested in linguistics, this short's for you!

I'll go over the differences between an alphabet, abjad, syllabary, abugida, and logography system! If you know these terms and systems of orthography, you can tackle pretty much any language out there!

Or, if you wanted some inspiration for a writing system for your conlang, this short is an excellent way to get to know the diversity in writing across the languages of the world.

Do you want to see more conlanging and linguistics content? Be sure to visit my website:

Thanks for watching! Leave a like, comment, and/or subscribe to help others learn about linguistics, etymology, grammatical evolution, and conlanging!

#orthography #writingsystem #conlanging #conlanginspiration

[ParchmentLore]

Hello everyone! Thanks for watching! If you know of any other writing systems, whether they’re a type of writing or an orthography itself, put it here in the comments! I love learning new things about languages! If you liked this video, be sure to like and subscribe! Until next time, friends!

[JosepJArnal]

Korean has a featural script. It's technically an alphabet, but the shape of each sign depends on features of its sound. Plus, the signs for each syllable get arranged in a kind of syllabic sign.

[kilobucket]

i generally hate when i watch shorts that explain things i already know, but the energy you have is weirdly exciting, like you're telling us a fun thing you learnt instead of teaching, if that makes sense? idk if thats the vibe you want, but it's fun for me to be able to enjoy content abt linguistics even if i already know whats being said

[floptaxie]

Japanese mixes logographs with sylabary, they complement each other in the text.

[rootkite]

Featural phonographic alphabets are my favorite; I've actually developed one of my own (which I call Oxanhára or Branch Writing). The main glyphs in the writing system represent singular phonemes, similarly to the IPA, and their base forms are altered with diacritics, rotation, and other distinctions to express features such as voicing, place of articulation, etc. Tolkien's Tengwar is such a system; and Shavian shorthand as well.

It is possible to write out utterances in many hundreds of languages with varying but comprehendable accuracy using a phonographic script. So far I haven't developed a system for clicks or tones, so I can't use my script to write Mandarin or !Xhosa, for instance; but the range of representable language varieties is broad.

Thank you for this intriguing channel! Linguistic hugs from Finland ❤

[FarahAthirah-npyn]

I really like the script like background you put on your videos. Thanks for teaching!

[WanderingSolaire]

Love how informative and quick these shorts are. Btw, can you recommend some proper academic books for a beginner in etymology, specially that of Indo-European languages? (My only previous experience with studying linguistics is George Yule's book)

[LucyReview-odth]

How about the Georgian Alphabet. I heard it’s very special not based on any other writing system. I can’t find the right term used by our tour guide but it seems so interesting

[wivota]

Im not a linguist, but I happen to know both chinese and middle egyptian and I must say those two writing systems are very different from one another in my experience. Chinese characters are rarly used phonetically (usually only for names of non-chinese origin) and are only used in a logographic sense (tho often times words with similar meaning are put together in order to form a two syllable word) while hieroglyphs are way more complexe. They are basically a mix of a logographic system with an abjad (at the same time certain characters are used for determination of words and characters can also function as phonetic complements; both helping readability).

[seraphim_danica]

I think the Alphasyllabary is the most efficient writing system because it combines elements of both syllabaries and alphabets. Unlike a pure syllabary, which represents each syllable with a unique symbol and can become cumbersome with many symbols, an alphasyllabary typically uses a base set of consonant symbols and modifies them with vowel marks or diacritics. This approach reduces the number of symbols needed compared to a full syllabary and is more flexible than an alphabet, which might require more symbols to represent all possible syllable combinations. Therefore, alphasyllabaries strike a balance between simplicity and comprehensiveness, making them efficient for representing complex sounds with fewer symbols.

[Æłğåöþůðėkhōœm-Hľÿğjøřėß]

I enjoy watching your videos more than any other way of learning about languages❤❤❤. I have used a lot of your content to make a geography presentation.
Watching you gave me the inspiration to start learning Eald Ænglisć. 😅😊

[ettinbriar]

ithkuil's script is "morpho-phonemic". there are some characters that convey the consonants in a word's root (and of some suffixes), but most of the word is built of purely grammatical symbols.

this creates a fun situation where the written word will always convey what the word *means*, but always comes with multiple (yet entirely equivalent) phonetic realizations

[Alexandre.Moonwell]

Egyptian hieroglyphs are actually a logo-abjadic script too, no vowels there either

[Bigboyisaacjosh]

Woah, I actually didn’t know the difference between the syllabary and an alphabet. Is there a Cherokee language currently based on a syllabary?

[idk-rw]

just wanted to say that し is orthographically “si” but usually romanized as “shi, ” and what about the inuktitut alphabet? it’s a featural syllabary where the direction a glyph is pointing determines the vowel sound, for example, ᑫ is kai, ᑭ is ki, ᑯ is ku and ᑲ is ka

[al_temuri]

The mysterious muqattaat letters in the Quran could also be a form of ancient arabic pictograms remnants of ancient egyptian influence, certain concepts or abrievations or a combination of all of above. These seem similar to Japanese Kanjis and egyptian hieroglyphs in a way.
Another unqiue script would be of a dead language system known as Quipu or Khipu used in pre european arrival andean cultures. It was unique as they used threads and knots for their language.

[piadas]

There are no "mandarin characters"; they are Chinese characters, used in different varieties of Chinese, Old Chinese (which originated almost all Chinese languages such as mandarin and yue), and Japanese, which is an unrelated language.

[justkevinlol]

Cuneiform, one of the earliest known writing systems in human history that used clay tablets and wedges.

[davecahyo]

My tribal writing system is an abudiga, but we just called them "aksara". I think abudiga is a term that is being used only by linguists. Sadly we don't use it anymore since it's very complex, especially if you have to make a consonant. Here all letters have vowels which we call "living" letters. So if you want to make it a consonant only (a "dead" letter), we have to remove the vowels, hence we "kill" it. We still know how to write since it's still being taught at school, but we practically never use it in our daily life. We prefer to use the Latin alphabet.

[KotrokoranaMavokely]

Japanese today uses : emojis a tupe of hyeroglif and uses romajis a neoltin alphabet too.
5 systems of scripts Japanese have today.