Written Languages

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|caption=Rosetta Stone
 
|caption=Rosetta Stone
 
}}
 
}}
 
 
 
Writing dates back to approximately the 4th millennium BC, and marks the boundary between "prehistoric" and "historic" times.
 
Writing dates back to approximately the 4th millennium BC, and marks the boundary between "prehistoric" and "historic" times.
  
Written language generally consists of a set of symbols (alphabetic, ideographic, or other) which represents an underlying language (usually derived from a [[Spoken Languages|spoken language]]) and is in turn given a physical or electronic representation as marks on a medium (such as [[paper]]) or digitally-encoded characters via a [[Character Encoding]].  Physical-media written language can also be digitized as [[graphics]].  The process of converting an image of written text into digitized characters (for further processing or indexing) is known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR).
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Written language generally consists of a set of symbols (alphabetic, ideographic, or other) which represents an underlying language (usually derived from a [[Spoken Languages|spoken language]]) and is in turn given a physical or electronic representation as marks on a medium (such as [[paper]]) or digitally-encoded characters via a [[character encoding]].  Physical-media written language can also be digitized as [[graphics]].  The process of converting an image of written text into digitized characters (for further processing or indexing) is known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR).
  
 
One should keep in mind the distinction between the abstract characters of a writing system and the specific "glyphs" that may represent them visually; the latter can vary by font style and exist in a variety of printed and handwritten versions.  Just what is a "separate character" versus a stylistic variation on one can be a somewhat arbitrary distinction; the letters "i" and "j" were at one point considered variations on a single letter of the Latin alphabet, while there continues to be controversy over which characters in the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean writing systems should be considered distinct.
 
One should keep in mind the distinction between the abstract characters of a writing system and the specific "glyphs" that may represent them visually; the latter can vary by font style and exist in a variety of printed and handwritten versions.  Just what is a "separate character" versus a stylistic variation on one can be a somewhat arbitrary distinction; the letters "i" and "j" were at one point considered variations on a single letter of the Latin alphabet, while there continues to be controversy over which characters in the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean writing systems should be considered distinct.
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* [[Hebrew alphabet]]
 
* [[Hebrew alphabet]]
 
* [[Latin alphabet]] (English, French, Italian, etc.)
 
* [[Latin alphabet]] (English, French, Italian, etc.)
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* [[Phoenician alphabet]] (ancestor of most modern alphabets)
  
 
* [[International Phonetic Alphabet]], not actually used as the alphabet of any language, but used to transcribe pronunciations in all languages
 
* [[International Phonetic Alphabet]], not actually used as the alphabet of any language, but used to transcribe pronunciations in all languages
  
== Other systems ==
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== Non-alphabetic systems ==
 
* [[Chinese script]]
 
* [[Chinese script]]
 
* [[Cuneiform]]
 
* [[Cuneiform]]
 
* [[Heiroglyphs]]
 
* [[Heiroglyphs]]
 
* [[Japanese script]]
 
* [[Japanese script]]
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== Miscellaneous ==
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* [[CAVE Language]]
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* [[Gregg shorthand]]
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* [[Stenotype]]
  
 
== Other things expressed in writing ==
 
== Other things expressed in writing ==
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* [[Date and time formats]]
 
* [[Date and time formats]]
* [[Hindu-Arabic numerals]] (used nearly universally in Western culture)
 
* [[Mathematical notation]]
 
 
* [[Musical notation]]
 
* [[Musical notation]]
* [[Roman numerals]]
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** [[Drum tablature]]
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** [[Guitar tablatures]]
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** ''(See also [[Audio and Music]])''
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* [[Numeric and counting systems]]
  
== Specific formalized types of written matter ==
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== Specific formalized types of written (or drawn) matter ==
  
 
* [[Comics]]
 
* [[Comics]]
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* [[Flowchart]]
 
* [[Legal briefs]]
 
* [[Legal briefs]]
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* [[Maps]]
 
* [[Patents]]
 
* [[Patents]]
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* [[Trading cards]]
  
== References ==
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== Links and references ==
 
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing Writing: Wikipedia]
 
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing Writing: Wikipedia]
 
* [http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/148212 7 Ancient Writing Systems That Haven’t Been Deciphered Yet] (Mental Floss)
 
* [http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/148212 7 Ancient Writing Systems That Haven’t Been Deciphered Yet] (Mental Floss)
 
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19964786 Breakthrough in world's oldest undeciphered writing] (BBC)
 
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19964786 Breakthrough in world's oldest undeciphered writing] (BBC)
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21427896 Ancient languages reconstructed by computer program] (BBC, 2013-02-12). This deals with spoken, rather than written, languages but it's still of interest.
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* [http://www.globa-lingua.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/WritingSystemsOfTheWorld.png Writing systems of the world]
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* [http://rosettaproject.org/ Rosetta Project]
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* [http://www.goldschp.net/SIG/onfim/onfim.html The Art of Onfim: Medieval Novgorod Through the Eyes of a Child]
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* [http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/07/16/the-science-that-uncovered-j-k-rowlings-literary-hocus-pocus/ Forensic Stylometry: The Science That Uncovered J.K. Rowling’s Literary Hocus-Pocus]
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* [https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/08/23/restoring-the-forgotten-javanese-script-through-wikimedia/ Restoring the forgotten Javanese script through Wikimedia]
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* [http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=8058 Turkey repeals ban on letters Q, W, and X]
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* [http://thefire.org/article/16392.html Dixie State University bans Greek letters from organization names]
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* [http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/07/the-unread-the-mystery-of-the-voynich-manuscript.html The Unread: The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript]
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* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-26198471 Breakthrough over 600-year-old mystery manuscript]
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* [http://the-dimka.livejournal.com/6645.html Codex Seraphinianus]
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* [http://boingboing.net/2013/11/05/the-box-of-crazy-amazing.html Another weird codex, allegedly found by the trash]
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* [http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4584 Anatomy of a spambot]
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* [http://www.nature.com/news/ancient-times-table-hidden-in-chinese-bamboo-strips-1.14482 Ancient times table hidden in Chinese bamboo strips]
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* [https://archive.org/details/indiangrammarbeg00elio The Indian grammar begun: or, An essay to bring the Indian language into rules, for the help of such as desire to learn the same, for the furtherance of the Gospel among them. (1666)]
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* [http://mentalfloss.com/article/27476/ray-cats-artificial-moons-and-atomic-priesthood-how-government-plans-protect-our Discussion of how to label atomic waste to be understandable by distant-future generations]
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* [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10620324/How-to-decipher-a-4000-year-old-tax-return.html How to decipher a 4,000-year-old tax return]
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* [http://kheafield.com/professional/stanford/crawl_paper.pdf N-gram Counts and Language Models from the Common Crawl]
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** [http://statmt.org/ngrams/ Data release]
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* [http://emop.tamu.edu/ Early Modern OCR Project]
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* [http://nlp.cs.berkeley.edu/ocular.shtml Ocular Historical Document Recognition System]
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* [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-secret-codes-that-cartels-use-to-send-orders-from-prison?trk_source=recommended The Secret Codes That Cartel Bosses Use to Send Handwritten Orders from Prison]

Latest revision as of 20:08, 30 January 2021

File Format
Name Written Languages
Ontology
Released ~4000 BC

Rosetta Stone

Rosetta Stone

Writing dates back to approximately the 4th millennium BC, and marks the boundary between "prehistoric" and "historic" times.

Written language generally consists of a set of symbols (alphabetic, ideographic, or other) which represents an underlying language (usually derived from a spoken language) and is in turn given a physical or electronic representation as marks on a medium (such as paper) or digitally-encoded characters via a character encoding. Physical-media written language can also be digitized as graphics. The process of converting an image of written text into digitized characters (for further processing or indexing) is known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR).

One should keep in mind the distinction between the abstract characters of a writing system and the specific "glyphs" that may represent them visually; the latter can vary by font style and exist in a variety of printed and handwritten versions. Just what is a "separate character" versus a stylistic variation on one can be a somewhat arbitrary distinction; the letters "i" and "j" were at one point considered variations on a single letter of the Latin alphabet, while there continues to be controversy over which characters in the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean writing systems should be considered distinct.

While writing is, in its basic form, a visual medium, various non-visual representations also exist, such as the tactile code of Braille and the auditory Morse code. These are different "file formats" for the purpose of this site, but they map onto underlying writing systems which are common to varied representations of the same language.

Another thing that can vary across writing systems is whether writing is from left-to-right or right-to-left, or sometimes top-to-bottom.

[edit] Alphabetic systems

[edit] Non-alphabetic systems

[edit] Miscellaneous

[edit] Other things expressed in writing

In addition to those representing the sounds or words of a human language, written communication sometimes uses other symbols and systems to express things like numbers or dates, in systems that can vary culturally or be internationally standardized, sometimes independently of what language the document is in.

[edit] Specific formalized types of written (or drawn) matter

[edit] Links and references

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