The Alphabetic writing Is a mechanism in which symbols can be used to represent all the individual sound types of a language.
The writing Can be defined as the symbolic representation of language through the use of graphic signs. It is a system that is not simply acquired, but has to be learned through conscious and sustained effort.
Not all languages have a written form and even among cultures that have a well-established form of writing, there are a large number of people who are not able to use the system.
A alphabet Is a set of written symbols where each represents a single type of sound or phoneme.
It is important to keep in mind that a large number of the languages in the world today are used only in spoken form and do not have a written form. In fact, writing is a relatively recent phenomenon.
It is possible to trace human attempts to visually represent the information in the drawings of caves made at least 20,000 years ago or in the discoveries of pieces of clay from about 10,000 years ago, which appear to have been an early attempt at accounting. These findings may be considered precursors of writing.
The earliest writing of which there is clear evidence is known as cuneiform Marked on fragments of clay of about 5,000 years ago.
An old script that has a more obvious connection to the writing systems used today can be identified in inscriptions dated about 3,000 years ago.
Illustration 1. Tablet with Cuneiform Writing
Much of the evidence used in the reconstruction of ancient writing systems comes from stone inscriptions. If ancient civilizations used other perishable materials such as wood and leather, these evidences have been lost.
From the available inscriptions, it is possible to trace the development of a tradition of writing and its evolution over thousands of years, with which humans have tried to create a permanent record of what happens.
Origin of the Alphabetical Scripture
The first writing systems correspond to Semitic languages Such as Arabic and Hebrew.
The words written in these languages consist largely of the association of different symbols to represent consonant sounds, which, when combined with the vowel sounds, which must be provided by the reader, allow us to define commonly used words.
This type of writing system is often called Consonantal alphabet . The Early Version of Writing Alphabetical Originates from the writing system of the Phoenicians, which is the basic source of most of the other alphabets found in the world.
The Greeks honed the literacy process by adding separate symbols to represent the sounds of vowels as distinct entities, and thus created a new system that included vowels.
This change added different symbols for each vowel sound, for example the 'alpha' sound, to accompany the existing symbols for consonant sounds, for example the 'beta' sound, giving rise to alphabetic writing.
In fact, for some authors the origin of the modern alphabet corresponds to the Greeks, who transformed the system clearly syllabic Of the Phoenicians to create a writing system in which there is an association of each sound with a symbol.
This revised alphabet passed from the Greeks to the rest of Western Europe through the Romans and on the way underwent various modifications to adapt to the needs of the different languages spoken on the continent.
As a result, the Roman alphabet is used as the writing system used for the Spanish language. Another line of development that adopted the same basic system of Greek writing was Eastern Europe, where Slavic languages were spoken.
The modified version is called Cyrillic alphabet, in honor to St. Cyril, a Christian missionary of century IX whose role was determinant in the development of this system. The Cyrillic alphabet represents the basis of the writing system used today in Russia.
The actual form of a series of letters in modern European alphabets can be traced from its origins in Egyptian hieroglyphs to our days as shown in the following illustration:
Illustration 2. Evolution of the Alphabetical Scripture.
Characteristics of Alphabetical Scripture
Alphabetical writing systems are based on the principle of Graphemes , Ie letters and strings of letters corresponding to the phonological units of speech.
However, these systems may differ from one another in many ways. Several terms, such as orthographic depth, transparency, consistency and regularity have been used to describe and compare them.
An ideal system that is transparent, consistent and regular, should contain a consonant set of grapheme-phoneme (spelling) and phoneme-grapheme (correspondence between spelling and loudness).
Therefore, there must be only one way to pronounce any given grapheme, and only one way to spell any given phoneme.
However, in practice only a small minority of systems of alphabetic writings such as Finnish, Turkish and Croatian Serbo come close to this ideal. Most alphabetic scripts encode information differently than the phonetic content of words.
Alphabetic spellings differ in so far as the above-mentioned variations are allowed, and these differences determine the degree of consistency and regularity between spelling and sound.
English is considered as the most inconsistent and irregular system of alphabetic writing because:
- The relationship between graphemes and phonemes is often opaque, for example, the letter T in" Listen "Has no corresponding phoneme.
- The correspondence between grapheme-phoneme and the phoneme-grapheme is inconsistent, for example, the grapheme" And "Has different pronunciations in" Head "Y" Heal ", On the other hand despite the fact that the words" Beef "," Chief "Y" Leaf "Contain the same phoneme / i / are assigned a different spelling in each word.
- There are many exceptions to acceptable spelling patterns, for example, spelling in Trek Violates the rule that monosyllables ending in / k / with short vowels are spelled using grapheme ck.
In Spanish the correspondence between grapheme and phoneme is much more intuitive and regular than in English.
However, some higher order rules are also needed. For example in Latin American Spanish, the letter"c"has the / s / sound when preceded by the vowels"e"or"i"but has the / k / sound in the other forms.
Most European orthographies are more regular and consistent than English, although there is an asymmetry in almost all alphabetic writing systems, so that the correspondence between grapheme and phoneme is greater than the correspondences phoneme and grapheme.
Examples of Alphabetical Writing
A particular type of writing system may actually employ different letters. Alphabetical writing systems take many forms, for example, the scripts used in the Devanagari, Greek, Cyrillic or Roman alphabets.
Illustration 3. Examples of Alphabetical Scripture.
Roman and Cyrillic alphabets are the most common alphabet systems in use. The Roman alphabet is used in much of Western Europe and in other regions of the world that have been influenced by European settlers.
The Cyrillic alphabet is used where the influence of the Eastern Orthodox Church has been strong, as in Serbia, Bulgaria and Russia.
In general, alphabetic systems for introducing literacy in a local language are preferred, as they tend to use fewer symbols than Semi syllabic or Logographic And are more compatible with computer keyboards.
Also these writing systems tend to be used more broadly in global communication.
References
- Healey, J. (1990). The Early Alphabet . California, University of California Press / British Museum.
- Taylor, I. (1991). The Alphabet: An Account of the Origin and Development of Letters, Volume I . London, Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co
- Yule, G. (2010). The Study of Language . Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
- Snowling, M. and Hulme, C. (2005). The Science of Reading: A Handbook . Malden, Blackwell Publishing.
- Pollatsek, A. and Treiman, R. (2015). The Oxford Handbook of Reading . Oxford, Oxford Library of Psychology.
- Grenoble, L. et al (2006). Saving Languages: An Introduction to Language Revitalization . Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.