Semi-syllabary

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A northeastern non-dual Iberian semi-syllabary. Un signari iberic nord-oriental.jpg
A northeastern non-dual Iberian semi-syllabary.

A semi-syllabary is a writing system that behaves partly as an alphabet and partly as a syllabary. The main group of semi-syllabic writing are the Paleohispanic scripts of ancient Spain, a group of semi-syllabaries that transform redundant plosive consonants of the Phoenician alphabet into syllabograms.

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Out of confusion, the term is sometimes applied to a different alphabetic typology known as abugida, alphasyllabary or neosyllabary, but for the purposes of this article it will be restricted to scripts where some characters are alphabetic and others are syllabic.

Iberian semi-syllabaries

The Paleohispanic semi-syllabaries are a family of scripts developed in the Iberian Peninsula at least from the 5th century BCE – possibly from the 7th century. Some researchers conclude that their origin lies solely with the Phoenician alphabet, while others believe the Greek alphabet also had a role. Paleohispanic semi-syllabaries are typologically unusual because their syllabic and alphabetic components are equilibrated: they behave as a syllabary for the stop consonants and as an alphabet for other consonants and vowels. In the syllabic portions of the scripts, each stop-consonant sign stood for a different combination of consonant and vowel, so that the written form of ga displayed no resemblance to ge. In addition, the southern original format did not distinguish voicing in these stops, so that ga stood for both /ga/ and /ka/, but one variant of the northeastern Iberian script, the older one according to the archaeological contexts, distinguished voicing in the stop consonants by adding a stroke to the glyphs for the alveolar (/d/~/t/) and velar (/g/~/k/) syllables.

The Tartessian or Southwestern script had a special behaviour: although the letter used to write a stop consonant was determined by the following vowel, the following vowel was also written. Some scholars treat Tartessian as a redundant semi-syllabary, others treat it as a redundant alphabet. Notably, Etruscan and early Latin did something similar with C, K, and Q, using K before a, Q before o and u, and C elsewhere, for both /k/ and /g/.

Other semi-syllabaries

Other scripts combine attributes of alphabet and syllabary. One of these is bopomofo (or zhuyin), a phonetic script devised for transcribing certain varieties of Chinese. Bopomofo includes several systems, such as Mandarin Phonetic Symbols for Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese Phonetic Symbols for Taiwanese Hokkien and Hakka, and Suzhou Phonetic Symbols for Wu Chinese. Bopomofo is not divided into consonants and vowels, but into onsets and rimes. Initial consonants and "medials" are alphabetic, but the nucleus and coda are combined as in syllabaries. That is, a syllable like kan is written k-an, and kwan is written k-u-an; the vowel is not written distinct from a final consonant. Pahawh Hmong is somewhat similar, but the rime is written before the initial; there are two letters for each rime, depending on which tone diacritic is used; and the rime /āu/ and the initial /k/ are not written except in disambiguation.

Old Persian cuneiform was somewhat similar to the Tartessian script, in that some consonant letters were unique to a particular vowel, some were partially conflated, and some simple consonants, but all vowels were written regardless of whether or not they were redundant.

The practice of plene writing in Hittite cuneiform resembles the Old Persian situation somewhat and may be interpreted such that Hittite cuneiform was already evolving towards a quasi-alphabetic direction as well.

The modern Bamum script is essentially CV-syllabic, but doesn't have enough glyphs for all the CV syllables of the language. The rest are written by combining CV and V glyphs, making these effectively alphabetic.

The Japanese kana syllabary occasionally acts as a semi-syllabary, for example when spelling syllables that do not exist in the standard set, like トゥ, tu, or ヴァ, va. In such cases, the first character functions as the consonant and the second as the vowel.

Further reading

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abugida</span> Writing system

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phoenician alphabet</span> Oldest verified alphabet

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iberian scripts</span> Writing systems

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Celtiberian script</span> Ancient writing system from the Iberian peninsula

The Celtiberian script is a Paleohispanic script that was the main writing system of the Celtiberian language, an extinct Continental Celtic language, which was also occasionally written using the Latin alphabet. This script is a direct adaptation of the northeastern Iberian script, the most frequently used of the Iberian scripts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tartessian language</span> Extinct unclassified language of southwest Iberia

The Tartessian language is the extinct Paleo-Hispanic language of inscriptions in the Southwestern script found in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula, mainly in the south of Portugal, and the southwest of Spain. There are 95 such inscriptions, the longest having 82 readable signs. Around one third of them were found in Early Iron Age necropolises or other Iron Age burial sites associated with rich complex burials. It is usual to date them to the 7th century BC and to consider the southwestern script to be the most ancient Paleo-Hispanic script, with characters most closely resembling specific Phoenician letter forms found in inscriptions dated to c. 825 BC. Five of the inscriptions occur on stelae with what has been interpreted as Late Bronze Age carved warrior gear from the Urnfield culture.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Southwest Paleohispanic script</span> Paleohispanic script

The Southwest Script or Southwestern Script, also known as Tartessian or South Lusitanian, is a Paleohispanic script used to write an unknown language usually identified as Tartessian. Southwest inscriptions have been found mainly in the southwestern quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula, mostly in the south of Portugal, but also in Spain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paleohispanic scripts</span> Writing systems used before the Latin alphabet

The Paleohispanic scripts are the writing systems created in the Iberian peninsula before the Latin alphabet became the main script. Most of them are unusual in that they are semi-syllabic rather than purely alphabetic, despite having supposedly developed, in part, from the Phoenician alphabet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Northeastern Iberian script</span> Writing system

The northeastern Iberian script, also known as Levantine Iberian or Iberian, was the main means of written expression of the Iberian language. The language is also expressed by the southeastern Iberian script and the Greco-Iberian alphabet. To understand the relationship between northeastern Iberian and southeastern Iberian scripts, one should point out that they are two different scripts with different values for the same signs. However, it is clear they have a common origin and the most accepted hypothesis is that northeastern Iberian script was derived from the southeastern Iberian script. Some researchers have concluded that it is linked to the Phoenician alphabet alone, but others believe the Greek alphabet also had a role.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Southeastern Iberian script</span> Writing system

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greco-Iberian alphabet</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bamum script</span> Set of scripts for the Bamum language of Cameroon

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