Table Of ContentThe Routledge Handbook of
Scripts and Alphabets
The Routledge Handbook of Scripts and Alphabets is a unique reference to the
main scripts and alphabets of the world.
The Handbook presents over sixty alphabets covering an enormous scope of
languages, from Amharic and Chinese to Thai and Cree. Full script tables are
given for every language and each entry is accompanied by a detailed overview
of its historical and linguistic context.
New to this second edition:
• new introduction discussing the basic principles and strategies utilized by
world writing systems
• expanded to include more writing systems
• improved presentation of non-Roman scripts
• organized into ancient, contemporary and autochthonous writing systems
• many new entries on fascinating and lesser-known writing systems.
This handy resource is the ideal reference for all students and scholars of language
and linguistics.
George L. Campbell worked for the BBC World Service and was a polyglot
linguist and translator.
Christopher Moseley is a linguist and lecturer at the School of Slavonic and
East European Studies, University of London. He is co-editor (with Prof. R.E.
Asher) of the Atlas of the World’s Languages (Routledge 2007) and general
editor of the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (2010).
The Routledge Handbook
of Scripts and Alphabets
Second edition
George L. Campbell and
Christopher Moseley
First published 1997
by Routledge
This second edition published 2012
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
©1997 George L. Campbell
©2012 George L. Campbell and Christopher Moseley
The right of George L. Campbell and Christopher Moseley to be
identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-415-56098-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-56097-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-86548-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong
Contents
Preface to the second edition viii
Acknowledgements x
Note on phonetic symbols xi
Introduction: the world’s families of scripts 1
Ancient writing systems 5
Aegean scripts 7
Anatolian scripts 10
Aramaic 12
Syriac 13
Brāhmī 16
Coptic 18
Egyptian 20
Epigraphic South Arabian 23
Etruscan see under Roman (Latin)
Gothic 26
Javanese (Kawi) 28
Maya 32
Ogham 34
Persian Cuneiform 36
Runic 38
Turkic Runes 40
vi Contents
Contemporary writing systems 43
Arabic 45
Armenian 50
Batak 53
Bengali 55
Berber (Tifinagh) 58
Buginese-Macassarese 61
Burmese 63
Cambodian 65
Cherokee 70
Chinese 72
Archaic Chinese 72
Classical Chinese (Wenli) 74
Modern Chinese 77
Cree 82
Cyrillic 84
Devanāgarī 91
Ethiopic 94
Georgian 96
Greek 98
Gujarati 101
Gurmukhi 103
Hebrew 105
Yiddish 106
Japanese 110
Kannada 115
Korean 117
Lao 121
Malayalam 123
Mongolian 125
Oriya 129
Roman (Latin) 132
Sinhalese 147
Tamil 149
Telugu 152
Thai 154
Tibetan 159
Yi 164
Contents vii
Autochthonous writing systems 167
Fraser script (Lisu) 169
Munda language scripts 171
N’ko 173
Pahawh Hmong 175
Pollard script 177
Rongorongo 179
Vai 180
Further reading 182
Index 183
Preface to the second edition
The present volume originally appeared as a supplementary part of the late George
L. Campbell’s two-volume Compendium of the World’s Languages. That work
has established itself as a unique survey of the major languages of the world
and very many of the minor ones as well, and in 1997 Routledge published the
supplement on scripts, virtually unchanged from the version included in the larger
work, as a guide to the many and diverse writing systems of the world.
George Campbell created the surveys of both languages and scripts more or
less single-handed, and it was the work of a virtuoso linguist. Campbell’s breadth
of knowledge of languages was legendary and prodigious, but inevitably there
were small errors in, and omissions from, his great work which have later come
to light. It has fallen to me to prepare an enlarged, amended version of his little
volume on scripts and writing systems, and in this I have tried to be both com-
prehensive and circumspect.
George Campbell (1912–2004) was born in Dingwall, Scotland, into a bilingual
Gaelic–English family, and soaked up languages avidly from an early age, study-
ing German in Leipzig and mastering several more languages during his sojourn
there. Stories of his voracious appetite for foreign languages are legion. During
his working life he was employed first by the School of Slavonic and East Euro-
pean Studies in London, and the BBC World Service – the same two employers
as I have had, but in the reverse order. It was only after his retirement from the
BBC in 1980 that he was able to devote himself full-time to his true passion,
the creation of the Compendium and the supplementary volume on Scripts which
you have before you.
This volume is fairly considerably amplified, but I hope it retains the spirit of
the original work, and will serve as a useful guide for anyone wanting an intro-
duction to the many and fascinating scripts in which the languages of the world
have been written. The emphasis is on the contemporary, but ancient writing
systems that have fallen into disuse are also given their due in these pages. For
this reason I have divided the scripts and writing systems into three separate,
alphabetically ordered sets:
Preface to the second edition ix
Ancient writing systems;
Contemporary writing systems;
Autochthonous writing systems.
By this set of definitions, an ‘ancient’ writing system is one that has long since
fallen out of use, and is applied to a now dead language; a ‘contemporary’
writing system is one that is still in use for at least one language; and an
‘autochthonous’ system is one that has arisen, usually in the past couple of cen-
turies, within or for a particular small speech community, unrelated to any system
used for surrounding languages.
The term ‘writing system’ is deliberately chosen to encompass the widest
possible range of methods of committing a language to a permanent surface.
This includes, for instance, the Maya glyphs (not previously included) and Egyp-
tian hieroglyphics, because, although they clearly derive from pictorial images,
they do obviously strive to represent the sounds of spoken language in a par-
ticular sequence that reflects that speech. What are not included in this volume
are hitherto undeciphered scripts, such as the ancient script of the Indus valley
(although recent work on the script has resulted in a fairly convincing decipher-
ment), and primitive pictographic systems which cannot be said with certainty
to consistently represent the sounds of spoken language.
It would be rash to claim that this book’s coverage is comprehensive. Apart
from the undeciphered ancient scripts, there are also small branches of the
family tree of scripts that have been omitted because of great similarity to
their parent scripts, and some more recent systems which have not gained wide
currency. I hope we have made up for any omissions by attempting to show
in family tree diagrams the complex interrelatedness of the main branches of
the world’s writing systems.
Christopher Moseley
Acknowledgements
The publishers would like to thank the following for permission to reproduce
material in this book:
Die Etruskische Sprache for The Early Western and Greek Etruscan Scripts chart
from Die Etruskische Sprache, Pfiffig, A.J. (1969).
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc for The Etruscan Script as used for Latin (1974).
The British Library Board for extract of German Fraktur: © British Library
website ‘images online’, ref. 060445, Gutenberg Bible, shelf mark C.9.d.4.
The University of California Press and the British Museum for Maya Glyphs by
S.D. Houston © 1989 by the Trustees of the British Museum, published by the
University of California Press.
The University of Oklahoma Press for the Cherokee Alphabet from Beginning
Cherokee by Holmes and Smith (1978).
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. If any have been
inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary
arrangements at the first opportunity.
