The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems

632 Pages·1999·104.503 MB·English

by  Florian Coulmas

THE BLACKWELL ENCYCLOPEDIA
OF WRITING SYSTEMS
THE BLACKWELL
ENCYCLOPEDIA
OF WRITING SYSTEMS
Florian Coulmas
• A
.. II Blackwell
Publishing
© 1996, 1999 by Florian Coulmas 

BLACKWELL PUBLISHING 
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148‐5020, USA 
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK  
550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia 

The right of Florian Coulmas to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in 
accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,  
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or 
otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the  
prior permission of the publisher. 

First published 1996  
First published in paperback 1999 

4   2006 

Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data 

Coulmas, Florian. 
The Blackwell encyclopedia of writing systems / Florian Coulmas. 
p.    cm. 
Includes bibliographical references (p.  ). 
ISBN 0‐631‐19446‐0 (hbk)—ISBN 0‐631‐21481‐X (pbk) 
1. Writing—Encyclopedias.  I. Title.  II. Title: Encyclopedia of 
   writing systems. 
     Z40.C67     1995                                                            94–47460 
     411—dc20                                                                           CIP 

ISBN‐13: 978‐0‐631‐19446‐0 (hbk)—ISBN‐13: 978‐0‐631‐21481‐6 (pbk) 

A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. 

Set in 10 on 12pt Palatino 
by Graphicraft Typesetters Limited, Hong Kong 
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom 
by TJI Digital, Padstow, Cornwall 

The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy, 
and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid‐free and elementary chlorine‐free 
practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have met 
acceptable environmental accreditation standards.

For further information on 
Blackwell Publishing, visit our website: 
www.blackwellpublishing.com
CONTENTS
List of Figures vi
List of Tables xvi
Preface xxv
Acknowledgements xxvii
Abbreviations and notational conventions xxviii
A-Z entries 1-577
Bibliography 578
v
LIST OF FIGURES
A
Figure 1 A sample of Afrikuandika with transcription 4
Figure 2 A page from the Aristophanes-Aldina 10
Figure 3 Aldus's emblem 11
Figure 4 Antique style of Giovanni Battista Bodoni's Manuale
Tipografico, 1818 19
Figure 5 Part of an inscription on a tomb, in Arabic 21
Figure 6 A page from the Qur'an in the maghribt script 22
Figure 7 A specimen of Assyrian cuneiform 26
Figure 8 Charlemagne's autograph 28
Figure 9 A page from the Codex Mendoza 32
B
Figure 1 Babylonian inscription on the so-called border
stone (kudurru) 35
Figure 2 A section of the Ramayana in Balinese script 36
Figure 3 Specimens of Bambara writing 37
Figure 4 A text written in the sixth version of the Barnum script 38
Figure 5 A text in Batak script with transcription 41
Figure 6 The Rosetta Stone 45
Figure 7 Comparison of BokmaI and Nynorsk 47
Figure 8 The most ancient form of the Chinese character for book and
its modern equivalent 47
Figure 9 A Chinese book made out of wooden tablets inscribed
vertically with a brush 48
Figure 10 Archaic Greek inscription in boustrophedon writing 50
Figure 11 Stele with inscription of Asoka edict in Brahm! script 51
Figure 12 The most important Brahrru-derived scripts 53
Figure 13 A specimen of Bugis writing 54
Figure 14 A specimen of Burmese writing 57
Figure 15 Enigmatic stone inscription from Byblos in Syria 57
C
Figure 1 Tools of penmanship 60
Figure 2 Strokes of the Pen by Francesco Pisani of Genoa, 1640 60
vi
List of Figures
Figure 3 Five different kinds of brush for Chinese calligraphy 61
Figure 4 Instruction for holding a brush 61
Figure 5 Instruction for producing basic strokes 62
Figure 6 Instruction for writing 63
Figure 7 Chinese calligraphy 63
Figure 8 Seventeenth-century calligraphic inscription from a tomb
in Agra, India, in Arabic 64
Figure 9 A page from a Qur'an in thuluth script, Egypt, mid
fourteenth century 65
Figure 10 Silverwork penbox signed by Shadhi, Iran, dated 1210 67
Figure 11 A specimen of the Chinese caoshu 67
Figure 12 Caroline minuscule 68
Figure 13 A cartouche with Egyptian hieroglyphs 69
Figure 14 William Caxton's printer's mark 70
Figure 15 Jean-Fran<;ois Champollion 71
Figure 16 A page from Champollion's manuscript 72
Figure 17 The direction of basic strokes for Chinese characters 80
Figure 18 Composition of the Chinese character for 'word' 81
Figure 19 A specimen of chu'n6m writing 85
Figure 20 The ciphering disk developed by Italian philosopher
Leon Battista Alberti 87
Figure 21 Neo-Babylonian clay tablet with cuneiform inscription 88
Figure 22 Pistis Sophia, a Coptic treatise expounding the doctrines of
the Gnostic teacher Valentius 94
Figure 23 Specimen of Naskapi writing in the Cree script 95
Figure 24 Cretan hieroglyph seals 96
Figure 25 Cretan hieroglyphs and Linear A on clay documents 97
Figure 26 Cryptograms designed by the earliest Christians 98
Figure 27 Standard writing position of stylus and tablet 98
Figure 28 Early Sumerian inscription 99
Figure 29 Gradual stylization and simplification of the cuneiform sign
for both an 'sky' and dingir 'god' 99
Figure 30 The permissible wedges of cuneiform 101
Figure 31 The lineage of cuneiform scripts 103
Figure 32 A computer graphics program redraws archaic cuneiform
records from photographs of clay tablets for filing and
analysing purposes 104
Figure 33 Specimen of cursive script by Rudolf Koch, 1916 105
Figure 34 Left-running Cypriote syllabic inscription 108
D
Figure 1 Specimen of the Chinese dazhuan or large-seal script by
Chen shi-ri, Qing dynasty 110
Figure 2 Specimen of Tibetan dbu-med script 111
Figure 3 Fragment of one of the Dead Sea scrolls 112
Figure 4 Language known, script unknown: the beginning of
vii
List of Figures
Lincoln's Gettysburg address written in the
Bernard Shaw alphabet 113
Figure 5 Early Mycenaean inscription from Orchomenos 114
Figure 6 Cartouche with King Ptolemy's name as it appears on
the Rosetta Stone 115
Figure 7 Champollion's successive steps in forming hypotheses
about the phonetic values of signs in cartouches on the
Rosetta Stone 116
Figure 8 Determinatives in the cartouche with Cleopatra's name 116
Figure 9 Experimental syllabic grid for the decipherment of Linear B 117
Figure 10 Specimen of Dehong writing 121
Figure 11 Ea 121
Figure 12 Thoth 122
Figure 13 Hermes Trismegistus 122
Figure 14 Ganesha 123
Figure 15 Maya rabbit god of the scribes 123
Figure 16 Specimen of Sanskrit text in DevanagarI script 126
Figure 17 Directions of script 131
E
Figure 1 Three lines of Easter Island script 137
Figure 2 Phonetic complements in the word netjeret 'goddess' 140
Figure 3 Phonograms supplemented by determinatives 141
Figure 4 Pleonastic writing for the word menhedj 'writing palette' 142
Figure 5 The phonotypic alphabet in use 143
Figure 6 Polyvalence in English spelling 144
Figure 7 The ivory writing tablet of Marsiliana d'A lbegna with a
model of the Etruscan alphabet engraved at the side,
seventh century BCE 147
Figure 8 Toy jug in the shape of a cock, incised with the
Etruscan alphabet, seventh century BCE 149
F
Figure 1 George Dalgaro's finger alphabet 151
Figure 2 How much variation is tolerable? 153
Figure 3 Sample of French grapheme-phoneme correspondence 156
Figure 4 Reform proposal for a new orthography by the French
Revolutionaries 159
Figure 5 Caption from a Japanese children's book fully
annotated with furigana 161
G
Figure 1 Sample of German grapheme-phoneme correspondence 166
Figure 2 Gothic type 170
viii
List of Figures
Figure 3 Modem graffiti 171
Figure 4 Ancient graffiti 171
Figure 5 Sample of modem Greek writing 183
Figure 6 Descendants of the Greek alphabet 184
Figure 7 The architecture of lower case grotesque letters 186
Figure 8 Anonymous portrait of Johannes Gutenberg 191
H
Figure 1 Simplified block diagram of systems involved
in handwriting 194
Figure 2 Sample of letter models with directions of strokes
indicated for elementary instruction in British schools 194
Figure 3 Sample of letter models with directions of strokes
indicated for elementary instruction in German schools 195
Figure 4 Johann Sebastian Bach's autographed letter of
recommendation for his son-in-law, J. Christoph Altniko 195
Figure 5 Hausa in Arabic letters 197
Figure 6 The Gezer Calendar, an ancient Hebrew record of the
annual agricultural cycle, tenth century BCE 198
Figure 7 Coins dating from the early second century CE with
Old Hebrew legend 198
Figure 8 Specimen of Hebrew writing 201
Figure 9 Fragment of a papyrus of a book of the dead in hieratic
script, 27th to 30th dynasties 203
Figure 10 Specimen of Hindi writing with transliteration
and translation 205
Figure 11 Poem written entirely in hiragana 208
Figure 12 Poem I-ro-ha uta 209
Figure 13 Bilingual and biscriptual Hittite seal of King Suppiluliuma I
(1380-1346 BCE) 210
Figure 14 Stone inscription of King Araras in Hittite hieroglyphic 211
Figure 15 Specimen of Hsi-hsia writing 217
Figure 16 Specimen of modem Hungarian writing 218
Figure 17 The Mitanni letter by King Tushratta of
Mitanni to Pharaoh Amenhotep IV of Egypt, c.1400 BCE 219
I
Figure 1 Lead plate from Alcoy, Spain, with Iberian inscription,
fourth century BCE 221
Figure 2 Early written characters for the word 'fish' 222
Figure 3 Modem icons 223
Figure 4 Hebrew letter as an iconic depiction of the tongue position
involved in the production of the sound it represents 224
Figure 5 Steatite seals with bull and inscription, from
Mohen-jo-Daro, Pakistan, c.2000 BCE 231
Figure 6 Specimens of seal inscriptions in Indus script 232
ix
List of Figures
Figure 7 Page with ornamented initial from Mira Calligraphiae
Monumenta, written by Georgii Bochkaj and
illuminated by Joris Hoefnagel, 1562-96 233
Figure 8 The international Niamey keyboard 235
Figure 9 Sample of Italian grapheme-phoneme correspondence 238
Figure 10 Specimen of italic from Aldus Manutius's Virgil,
Venice, 1501 238
J
Figure 1 A paragraph of contemporary Japanese writing 239
Figure 2 Multiple readings of the Chinese character 17 in Japanese 241
Figure 3 Three ways of writing Japanese 243
Figure 4 Stone inscription from Ngadoman, dated 1449 CE 244
Figure 5 Sample page of Javanese pegon (adapted Arabic) script 245
Figure 6 Passage of Javanese manuscript written about 1800 CE in
the ornate Kraton script 246
Figure 7 Poetic signs of the Javanese script 249
Figure 8 Sample sentence of Jingpo 250
K
Figure 1 A specimen of the Chinese kaishu, standard script, Tang
dynasty (618-906) 252
Figure 2 A page in hentai-kanbun 257
Figure 3 Chinese characters annotated with reading aids of
which katakana evolved 260
Figure 4 Foreign names and loan words in katakana spelling and
back transliteration 261
Figure 5 A paragraph from a Japanese translation of Jules Verne's
Around the World in Eighty Days, published in 1870 262
Figure 6 Sanskrit and Old Javanese stone inscription from
Pereng, dated 863 CE 264
Figure 7 Sample sentence of Kazakh in Arabic script 266
Figure 8 Kharo~th"i inscription on wood, third century CE 267
Figure 9 A nineteenth-century Kiswahili letter in Arabic script
with Roman transcription 271
Figure 10 Korean kugyol, simplified Chinese characters 273
Figure 11 Hun min jong urn, 'the correct sounds for instructing the
people', the royal rescript explaining the new Korean script 274
Figure 12 Sample of contemporary Korean writing 276
Figure 13 A page from the Qur'an written in kafle script 279
Figure 14 Sample sentence of Ky rghiz in Arabic script 280
L
Figure 1 Ancient Latin inscription on the Lapis Niger, sixth
century BCE 285
x
List of Figures
Figure 2 The earliest Latin inscription on the Praeneste Fibula 286
Figure 3 Latin inscription incapitales quadratae, 97 CE 288
Figure 4 Hymn to the praise of Narok Rum, the Lepcha
god of muse 289
Figure 5 Various shapes of the letter em 291
Figure 6 Parts of letters and their names 293
Figure 7 Letters cast in lead 293
Figure 8 Design of modern ligatures by J. S. Scorsone 295
Figure 9 Some Devanagarl ligatures 296
Figure 10 Linear A inscription on a clay tablet from Hagia Triada 298
Figure 11 Specimen of Linear B 299
Figure 12 A specimen of the Chinese lishu, clerical script, Ming
dynasty (1368-1644) 300
Figure 13 The Standard Professions List, one of the most ancient
written documents of Babylonia, which was frequently copied 301
Figure 14 Specimen of Old and New Lisu writing with translation 303
M
Figure 1 The two-line system: majuscules 313
Figure 2 Specimen of majuscule writing in Latin 314
Figure 3 Makasarese text of Bungaya treaty (1667), article 16 315
Figure 4 Maltese sample sentence 319
Figure 5 Preface and first page of quintolingual Manchu dictionary 320
Figure 6 Mangyan poem engraved in bamboo, with transliteration
and translation 325
Figure 7 Page from a French manuscript book of hours, in Latin,
mid fifteenth century 327
Figure 8 Maya hieroglyphs on a lintel 330
Figure 9 Polyvalence of Maya glyphs 331
Figure 10 Maya glyphs of toponyms 331
Figure 11 Visual alphabets as memory aids 335
Figure 12 Sample sentence in Pollard Miao writing with translation 341
Figure 13 The four-line system: minuscules 341
Figure 14 Caroline minuscule, ninth century 341
Figure 15 Moabite inscription on the stele of King Mesa',
ninth century BCE 342
Figure 16 Mongolian sample sentence in traditional script 345
Figure 17 A page from a 1993 monolingual biscriptual
Mongolian dictionary 346
N
Figure 1 An illustrated page from the Qur'an, Samarkand
school, later fifteenth century, in naskhr script 352
Figure 2 Specimen of nasta'lrq script from a Sixteenth-century
manuscript 353
xi