Go to the relevant discussion by clicking on the section headings below.
When you’re ready to take the quiz
based on this topic, go to the LumiNUS page and click
on ‘Quiz’ on the left, and then on ‘Writing’.
Additional references
O’Grady, William et al.
(1996), Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction (
Pyles, Thomas and John Algeo (1993), The Origins and Development of the English Language, 4th edn, Ch. 3.
In Kazakhstan in October 2017, the President
announced a switch from the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin alphabetic, and the
changeover is to be official by 2025. Here is the BBC report.
In Azerbaijan, they changed from Cyrillic to
Latin script on
Evolution of
Alphabets - http://www.wam.umd.edu/~rfradkin/
Site details the evolution of many of
the world’s major alphabets.
Ancient
Scripts of the World - http://alumni.eecs.berkeley.edu/~lorentz/asw/
Lawrence Lo describes the origins,
types and families of writing systems. Sections on phonetics, historical
linguistics. Bibliography and links.
Indian Alphabet
Comparison - http://www.ukindia.com/zalph.htm
A comparison of written Hindi, Punjabi,
Bengali and Gujarati by Eden Golshani.
Omniglot - http://www.omniglot.com
Guide to all major alphabets,
syllabaries and other writing systems. Also includes information on languages
and links to other online language resources.
African
Writing Systems - http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/Writing_Systems/Amharic.html
An examination of the writing systems of
Introduction
to Linguistics: Writing Systems Resources - http://www.georgetown.edu/cball/ling001/intro-resources-writing.html
Links to information about graphemics.
Impact of
the Dravidian Culture on the Writing Systems in India. - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/2104/scripts.html
A paper which examines the development of
scripts in
A Study
of Chinese Writing Systems - http://www.humboldt.edu/~cllc/writesys.htm
Academic paper which
examines Chinese orthography
Orthography
Examples - http://logos.uoregon.edu/explore/orthography/examples.html
Samples of non-Latin writing systems,
including Cyrillic, Aramaic, a syllabary, and a phonetic system.
Shavian Alphabet - http://www.shavian.f9.co.uk/
An alternative alphabet developed for English
by George Bernard Shaw. This site introduces Shavian script, and offers fonts
and applications for the scholar.
Non-Roman
Writing Systems and the Internet. - http://www.siu.edu/~lmc/non-roman.html
Links of use to students of non-Latin
languages and graphemics.