In sociolinguistics, digraphia refers to the use of more than one writing system for the same language. [1] Synchronic digraphia is the coexistence of two or more writing systems for the same language, while diachronic digraphia or sequential digraphia is the replacement of one writing system by another for a particular language. [2]
Hindustani, with an Urdu literary standard written in Urdu alphabet and a Hindi standard written in Devanagari, is one of the "textbook examples" [3] of synchronic digraphia, cases where writing systems are used contemporaneously. An example of diachronic digraphia, where one writing system replaces another, occurs in the case of Turkish, for which the traditional Arabic writing system was replaced with a Latin-based system in 1928. [4] [5]
Digraphia has implications in language planning, language policy, and language ideology.
English digraphia, like French digraphie, etymologically derives from Greek di- δι- "twice" and -graphia -γραφία "writing".
Digraphia was modeled upon diglossia "the coexistence of two languages or dialects among a certain population", which derives from Greek diglossos δίγλωσσος "bilingual." Charles A. Ferguson, a founder of sociolinguistics, coined diglossia in 1959. [6] Grivelet analyzes how the influence of diglossia on the unrelated notion of digraphia has "introduced some distortion in the process of defining digraphia," such as distinguishing "high" and "low" varieties. [7] Peter Unseth notes one usage of "digraphia" that most closely parallels Ferguson's "diglossia," situations where a language uses different scripts for different domains; for instance, "shorthand in English, pinyin in Chinese for alphabetizing library files, etc. or several scripts which are replaced by Latin script during e-mail usage." [8]
The Oxford English Dictionary , which does not yet include digraphia, enters two terms, digraph and digraphic. [9] First, the linguistic term digraph is defined as, "A group of two letters expressing a simple sound of speech". This meaning applies to both two letters representing a single speech sound in orthography (e.g., English ng representing the velar nasal /ŋ/) and a single grapheme with two letters in typographical ligature (e.g., the Old English Latin alphabet letter æ). Second, the graph theory term digraph (a portmanteau from directed graph) is defined as, "A graph in which each line has a direction associated with it; a finite, non-empty set of elements together with a set of ordered pairs of these elements." The two digraph terms were first recorded in 1788 and 1955, respectively. The OED2 defines two digraphic meanings, "Pertaining to or of the nature of a digraph" and "Written in two different characters or alphabets." It gives their earliest examples in 1873 and 1880 (which was used meaning "digraphia"). Isaac Hollister Hall, an American scholar of Oriental studies, described an Eteocypriot language publication as "bilingual (or digraphic, as both inscriptions are in the same language)." [10] Hall's article was antedated by Demetrios Pieridis's 1875 usage of digraphic instead of bilingual for an inscription written in both the Greek alphabet and Cypriot syllabary. [11]
English digraphic and digraphia were contemporaneous with their corresponding terms in French linguistics. In 1877, Julius Oppert introduced digraphique to describe languages written in cuneiform syllabaries. [12] In 1893, Auguste Barth used French digraphisme for Cambodian inscriptions written in Khmer script and Brāhmī script. [13] In 1971, Robèrt Lafont coined digraphie regarding the sociolinguistics of French and Occitan. [14]
Although the word "digraphia" is new, the practice is ancient. Darius the Great's (c. 522-486 BCE) Behistun Inscription was written in three cuneiform scripts for Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian. [15]
Four authors independently neologized English digraphia from diglossia.
The Songhay linguist Petr Zima (1974) first used "digraphia" to describe the Hausa language having two writing systems, Boko (Latin script) and Ajami script (Arabic script). [16] Zima differentiated these paired situations.
Usage of "diorthographia" is unusual. Compare dysgraphia meaning "a language disorder that affects a person's ability to write" and dysorthographia "a synonym for dyslexia".
The anthropologist James R. Jaquith (1976), who studied unconventional spelling in advertising, used "digraphia" to describe the practice of writing brand names in all caps (e.g., ARRID). He described digraphia as "the graphic analog of what linguists call diglossia", and defined it as "different versions of a written language exist simultaneously and in complementary distribution in a speech community." [18]
The sociolinguist Ian R. H. Dale (1980) wrote a general survey of digraphia, defined as, "the use of two (or more) writing systems to represent varieties of a single language." [19]
The sinologist and lexicographer John DeFrancis (1984) used digraphia, defined as "the use of two or more different systems of writing the same language," to translate Chinese shuangwenzhi (雙文制 "two-script system") of writing in Chinese characters and Pinyin. [20] DeFrancis later explained, "I have been incorrectly credited with coining the term digraphia, which I indeed thought I had created as a parallel in writing to Charles Ferguson's diglossia in speech." [21]
Hegyi coined and suggested the terms "bigraphism" and "multigraphism", [22] but he only used them twice (p. 265; fn. 17, p. 268) and did not promote the use of either of these terms, nor follow up on his insights into the importance of studying "the use of two or more different writing systems for the same language... such cases have been more widespread than commonly assumed."
Digraphia is an uncommon term in current English usage. For instance, the Corpus of Contemporary American English, which includes over 425,000,000 words, lists digraphia three times in "academic genre" contexts.
Stéphane Grivelet, who edited a special "Digraphia: Writing systems and society" issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language , explains. [23]
After 25 years and various articles on the subject, there are still important differences in the scope of the definition, and the notion itself is rarely used in sociolinguistics, apart from the field of Chinese studies, where the notion of digraphia is nowadays frequently used to describe the coexistence of two writing systems: Chinese script and Pinyin. [24]
Digraphia has some rare synonyms. Orthographic diglossia antedates digraphia, and was noted by Paul Wexler in 1971." [25] Bigraphism, bialphabetism, and biscriptality are infrequently used.
Some scholars avoid using the word "digraphia". Describing terminology for "script obsolescence," Stephen D. Houston, John Baines, and Jerrold Cooper say, "'Biscript' refers to a text in two different writing systems. 'Biliteracy' and 'triliteracy' label the concurrent use of two or three scripts." [26]
Digraphia can be either "synchronic" (or "concurrent") or "diachronic" ("historical" or "sequential"), [27] extending Ferdinand de Saussure's classic division between synchronic linguistics and diachronic linguistics. Dale first differentiated "diachronic (or historical) digraphia" ("more than one writing system used for a given language in successive periods of time") and "synchronic digraphia" ("more than one writing system used contemporaneously for the same language"). [28] Dale concluded that,
Two primary factors have been identified as operating on a society in the choice of script for representing its language. These are the prevailing cultural influence (often a religion) and the prevailing political influence of the period in which the choice is made. Synchronic digraphia results when more than one such influence is operating and none can dominate all groups of speakers of the language in question [ … ] Diachronic digraphia results when different influences prevail over a given speech community at different times. [29]
Some recent scholarship questions the practicality of this synchronic/diachronic distinction. Grivelet contends that, "digraphia is a single sociolinguistic process with two types of outcome (concurrent or sequential digraphia) and with specific features related to the causes and types of development of the various cases. [30]
Peter Unseth lists and exemplifies four factors that can influence a language community's choice of a script. [31]
Linguists who study language and gender have analyzed gender-differentiated speech varieties ("genderlects", usually spoken by women), and there are a few cases of scripts predominantly used by women. Japanese hiragana was initially a women's script, for instance, used by Murasaki Shikibu to write The Tale of Genji . Chinese Nüshu script (literally "women's writing) is a simplification of characters that was traditionally used by women in Jiangyong County of Hunan province. [33]
Not only scripts, but also letters can have iconic power to differentiate social groups. For example, the names of many heavy metal bands (e.g., Motörhead, Infernäl Mäjesty, Mötley Crüe) use umlauts "to index the musical genre as well as the notion of 'Gothic' more generally." [34] This digraphic usage is called the "metal umlaut" (or "röck döts").
Synchronic digraphia is the coexistence of two or more writing systems for the same language. A modern example is the Serbo-Croatian language, [35] which is written in either the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet or Gaj's Latin alphabet. Although most speakers can read and write both scripts, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks generally use Latin, while Orthodox Serbs and Montenegrins generally use Cyrillic. However, older indigenous scripts were used much earlier, most notably Bosnian Cyrillic. [36] Inuktitut is also officially digraphic, using both Latin and Inuktitut syllabics. In Hindustani, the Devanagari or Urdu script generally follows the Hindi and Urdu standards and the speaker's religious affiliation, though Urdu is sometimes written in Devanagari in India. Digraphia is limited, however, in that most people know only one script. Similarly, depending on which side of the Punjab border a Punjabi language speaker lives in, India or Pakistan, and religious affiliation, they will use the Gurmukhi or Shahmukhi script respectively. The former shares similarities with Devanagari and the latter is essentially a derivative of the Urdu writing script (Perso-Arabic). The Arvanitic dialect of Albanian is written in both the Greek alphabet and Latin (Δασκαρίνα Πινότσ̈ι/Dhaskarina Pinoçi.)
The Japanese writing system has unusually complex digraphia. William C. Hannas distinguishes two digraphic forms of Japanese: "true digraphia" of occasionally using rōmaji Latin alphabet for a few loanwords like DVD, and of regularly using three scripts (technically, "trigraphia") for different functions. Japanese is written with kanji "Chinese character" logographs used for both Sino-Japanese vocabulary as well as native vocabulary; hiragana used for native Japanese words without kanji or difficult kanji, and for grammatical endings; and katakana used for foreign borrowings or graphic emphasis. [37] Nihon, for instance, the primary name of Japan, is normally written 日本 (literally, "sun's origin") in kanji – but is occasionally written にほん in hiragana, ニホン in katakana, or Nihon in rōmaji ("romanization"). Japanese users have a certain amount of flexibility in choosing between scripts, and their choices can have social meaning. [38]
Another example is the Malay language, which most often uses the Latin alphabet, while in certain geographic areas (Kelantan state of Malaysia, Brunei) it is also written with an adapted Arabic alphabet called Jawi. Adaptations of the Arabic script are also widely used across the Malay Archipelago since the introduction of Islam. In Java, Javanese people, which were predominantly ruled by Hindu and Buddha kingdoms, have their own writing system, called Hanacaraka. When the Islamic power took place, a modified Arabic writing system (called Pegon) was introduced, along with the massive introduction of the Latin alphabet by western colonialists. This results in the use of three writing systems to write modern Javanese, either based on a particular context (religious, cultural or normal), or sometimes also written simultaneously. This phenomenon also occurred in some other cultures in Indonesia.
An element of synchronic digraphia is present in many languages not using the Latin script, in particular in text messages and when typing on a computer which does not have the facility to represent the usual script for that language. In such cases, Latin script is often used, although systems of transcription are often not standardised.
Digraphia is controversial in modern Written Chinese. The ongoing debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters concerns "diglyphia" or "pluricentricity" rather than digraphia. Chinese digraphia involves the use of both Chinese characters and Hanyu Pinyin romanization. Pinyin is officially approved for a few special uses, such as annotating characters for learners of Chinese and transcribing Chinese names. [39] Nevertheless, Pinyin continues to be adopted for other functions, such as computers, education, library catalogs, and merchandise labels. [40] Among Chinese input methods for computers, Pinyin is the most popular phonetic method. Zhou Youguang predicts, "Digraphia is perhaps the key for Chinese to enter the age of Information processing." [41] Many writers, both from China (e.g., Mao Dun and Zhou Youguang) and from abroad (e.g., John DeFrancis, Victor H. Mair, J. Marshall Unger, and William Hannas [42] ) have argued for digraphia to be implemented as a Chinese language standard. These digraphic reformers call for a generalized use of Pinyin orthography along with Chinese characters. Yat-Shing Cheung differentiates three Chinese digraphic situations. (1) Both the High and the Low forms derive from the same script system: traditional and simplified characters. (2) Both forms derive from the same system but the Low form borrows foreign elements: Putonghua and Fangyan. (3) The High and the Low forms derive from two different script systems: Chinese characters and pinyin. [43]
Other examples of synchronic digraphia:
Diachronic or sequential digraphia, in which a language switches writing systems, can occur gradually through language change or more quickly though language reform. Turkish switched from Arabic script to Latin within one year, under reforms ordered by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, while the transition from writing Korean in Chinese characters to writing in Hangul took hundreds of years. [8]
There are many examples of languages that used to be written in a script, which was replaced later. Examples are Romanian (which originally used Cyrillic and changed to Latin) in the 1860s; Vietnamese (which switched from a form of Chinese writing called Chữ Nôm to the Latin alphabet); Turkish, Swahili, Somali, and (partially) Malay, which all switched from Arabic script to the Latin alphabet, and many countries of the former Soviet Union, which abandoned the Cyrillic script after the dissolution of the USSR such as Moldova, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan which all switched from Cyrillic to Latin. As old literature in the earlier scripts remains, there is typically some continuing overlap in use, by scholars studying earlier texts, reprinting of earlier materials for contemporary readers and other limited uses. [48]
The Azerbaijani language provides an extreme example of diachronic digraphia; it has historically been written in Old Turkic, Arabic, Latin, Cyrillic, and again Latin alphabets. [8] [49]
Other examples of diachronic digraphia:
An alphabet is a standard set of letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from another in a given language. Not all writing systems represent language in this way: a syllabary assigns symbols to spoken syllables, while logographies assign symbols to words, morphemes, or other semantic units.
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters in predictable ways, such as Greek ⟨α⟩ → ⟨a⟩, Cyrillic ⟨д⟩ → ⟨d⟩, Greek ⟨χ⟩ → the digraph ⟨ch⟩, Armenian ⟨ն⟩ → ⟨n⟩ or Latin ⟨æ⟩ → ⟨ae⟩.
Various Mongolian writing systems have been devised for the Mongolian language over the centuries, and from a variety of scripts. The oldest and native script, called simply the Mongolian script, has been the predominant script during most of Mongolian history, and is still in active use today in the Inner Mongolia region of China and has de facto use in Mongolia.
In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and transcription, for representing the spoken word, and combinations of both. Transcription methods can be subdivided into phonemic transcription, which records the phonemes or units of semantic meaning in speech, and more strict phonetic transcription, which records speech sounds with precision.
A written language is the representation of a language by means of writing. This involves the use of visual symbols, known as graphemes, to represent linguistic units such as phonemes, syllables, morphemes, or words. However, written language is not merely spoken or signed language written down, though it can approximate that. Instead, it is a separate system with its own norms, structures, and stylistic conventions, and it often evolves differently than its corresponding spoken or signed language.
In linguistics, diglossia is where two dialects or languages are used by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety, a second, highly codified lect is used in certain situations such as literature, formal education, or other specific settings, but not used normally for ordinary conversation. The H variety may have no native speakers within the community. In cases of three dialects, the term triglossia is used. When referring to two writing systems coexisting for a single language, the term digraphia is used.
A phonemic orthography is an orthography in which the graphemes correspond consistently to the language's phonemes, or more generally to the language's diaphonemes. Natural languages rarely have perfectly phonemic orthographies; a high degree of grapheme–phoneme correspondence can be expected in orthographies based on alphabetic writing systems, but they differ in how complete this correspondence is. English orthography, for example, is alphabetic but highly nonphonemic.
Uyghur is a Turkic language with a long literary tradition spoken in Xinjiang, China by the Uyghurs. Today, the Uyghur Arabic alphabet is the official writing system used for Uyghur in Xinjiang, whereas other alphabets like the Uyghur Cyrillic alphabets are still in use outside China, especially in Central Asia, and Uyghur Latin is used in western countries.
In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined to form a single glyph. Examples are the characters ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨œ⟩ used in English and French, in which the letters ⟨a⟩ and ⟨e⟩ are joined for the first ligature and the letters ⟨o⟩ and ⟨e⟩ are joined for the second ligature. For stylistic and legibility reasons, ⟨f⟩ and ⟨i⟩ are often merged to create ⟨fi⟩ ; the same is true of ⟨s⟩ and ⟨t⟩ to create ⟨st⟩. The common ampersand, ⟨&⟩, developed from a ligature in which the handwritten Latin letters ⟨e⟩ and ⟨t⟩ were combined.
An official script is a writing system that is specifically designated to be official in the constitutions or other applicable laws of countries, states, and other jurisdictions. Akin to an official language, an official script is much rarer. It is used primarily where an official language is in practice written with two or more scripts. As, in these languages, use of script often has cultural or political connotations, proclamation of an official script is sometimes criticized as having a goal of influencing culture or politics or both. Desired effects also may include easing education, communication and some other aspects of life.
Gaj's Latin alphabet, also known as abeceda or gajica, is the form of the Latin script used for writing Serbo-Croatian and all of its standard varieties: Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian.
Three alphabets are used to write Kazakh: the Cyrillic, Latin and Arabic scripts. The Cyrillic script is used in Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia. An October 2017 Presidential Decree in Kazakhstan ordered that the transition from Cyrillic to a Latin script be completed by 2031. The Arabic script is used in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, and parts of China.
The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Greek alphabet was altered by the Etruscans, and subsequently their alphabet was altered by the Ancient Romans. Several Latin-script alphabets exist, which differ in graphemes, collation and phonetic values from the classical Latin alphabet.
The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world, the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it, and the third-most by number of users.
The modern Malay and Indonesian alphabet consists of the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet. It is the more common of the two alphabets used today to write the Malay language, the other being Jawi. The Latin Malay alphabet is the official Malay script in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, while it is co-official with Jawi in Brunei.
The Mongolian Latin script was officially adopted in Mongolia in 1931. In 1939, a second version of the Latin alphabet was introduced but not widely used, and was replaced by the Cyrillic script in 1941.
Numerous Cyrillic alphabets are based on the Cyrillic script. The early Cyrillic alphabet was developed in the 9th century AD and replaced the earlier Glagolitic script developed by the theologians Cyril and Methodius. It is the basis of alphabets used in various languages, past and present, Slavic origin, and non-Slavic languages influenced by Russian. As of 2011, around 252 million people in Eurasia use it as the official alphabet for their national languages. About half of them are in Russia. Cyrillic is one of the most-used writing systems in the world. The creator is Saint Clement of Ohrid from the Preslav literary school in the First Bulgarian Empire.
The former State Administration of Surveying and Mapping, Geographical Names Committee and former Script Reform Committee of the People's Republic of China have adopted several romanizations for Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan and Uyghur, officially known as pinyin, Regulation of Phonetic Transcription in Hanyu Pinyin Letters of Place Names in Minority Nationality Languages and Orthography of Chinese Personal Name in Hanyu Pinyin Letters. These systems may be referred to as SASM/GNC/SRC transcriptions or SASM/GNC romanizations.
Evenki orthography is the orthography of the Evenki language.
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