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The vast majority of alphabetic writing systems are part of the Phoenician lineage (e.g. Latin, Cyrillic and friends) or Brahmic (Devanagari and friends). Is there an active alphabetic system outside these two families. I found it surprising if there are only two families, while other types of writing system seem to have a lot more families. Is there any explanation to this?

tdhsmith
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Louis Rhys
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  • Very interesting question. Even though writing was invented independently a couple of times (certainly at least once in Old World and once in New World), alphabet seems to be invented only once, with the probable exception of Hangul. – cyco130 May 05 '12 at 23:49

2 Answers2

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Yes. Korean Hangul.

This is the only one known to me.

(Incidentally, the Brahmic lineage is itself derived from the Phoenician.)

Colin Fine
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  • Isn't Hangul a syllabary? – Louis Rhys Oct 21 '11 at 15:42
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    @LouisRhys No it's not. It's an alphabet with consonants and vowels. :) When written, words are "clearly" visually divided in syllables, but consonants and vowels "exist" alone. For example: ㅅ(s), ㅏ(a), ㄹ(r), ㅏ(a), ㅁ(m): 사람 saram = person. The word has 2 blocks, which are 2 syllables, SA + RAM, but you can see the difference with Japanese where SA さ is a single symbol. – Alenanno Oct 21 '11 at 16:07
  • ok. +1 from me, but I'd love other examples (or if somebody can explain the apparent small number of alphabet lineages) – Louis Rhys Oct 21 '11 at 17:12
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    There is, however, a theory linking Hangul back into the Brahmic (hence, Phoenician) lineage. – Zhen Lin Oct 21 '11 at 23:04
  • Though according to the same source, Ledyard specifically said "...but it should be clear to any reader that in the total picture, that [Phagspa script's] role was quite limited ... Nothing would disturb me more, after this study is published, than to discover in a work on the history of writing a statement like the following: "According to recent investigations, the Korean alphabet was derived from the Mongol 'phags-pa script". The Wikipedia article also says "Ledyard's theory below is rejected by the majority of Korean scholars", though this statement is unreferenced. – Colin Fine Oct 24 '11 at 11:22
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    @LouisRhys: I suspect there is speculation on this question in Bright & Daniels, The World's Writing Systems, but I haven't checked. It certainly appears that alphabets have been invented far less often than syllabaries: besides Phoenician and Hangul, the only other one I recall is Ugaritic. I certainly remember a suggestion (perhaps in Bright & Daniels) that the syllable is a more natural and salient element than a phone in decomposing speech phonetically. – Colin Fine Oct 24 '11 at 11:30
  • @ColinFine Ugaritic did not use a true alphabet, but an abjad, indicating only the consonants, the reader having to work out the vowels. 'Abjad' is a fairly recent term, in Semitic and Biblical studies abjads it's been common for them to be referred to as alphabets. – Gaston Ümlaut May 20 '12 at 13:37
  • @LouisRhys Re the Brahmic family of scripts, they are syllabaries (mostly abugidas), not true alphabets. – Gaston Ümlaut May 20 '12 at 13:39
  • What is the lineage of Indus script? – pinkpanther May 30 '16 at 20:18
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    Also about Brahmi lineage wiki says: The current position among most scholars outside of South Asia is that Brahmi was likely derived from or influenced by a Semitic script model, with Aramaic being a leading candidate, but they are usually hesitant to consider the issue completely settled due to the lack of strong evidence. – pinkpanther May 30 '16 at 20:19
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While Hangul (Korean) is not totally based on the Phoenician alphabetic system it was inspired by the shapes in Tibetan(Phagspa) and other Brahmic scripts, see the origin of Hangul.

Also some modern day scripts are also not based strictly on the Phoenician alphabetic system. One example is the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics. Note that this too was inspired by Devanagari & Pitman.

Note: If you were to account for Syllabaries too (Not strictly Alphabetic) the Yi Script would be one too - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yi_script

Nausher
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  • Hangul was so inspired according to one person's theory. And the OP asked specifically about alphabetic writing systems, not syllabaries. – Colin Fine May 20 '12 at 00:42