Syllabary (writing system)
A syllabary is a set of written characters or symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables that make up words. A symbol in a syllabary usually represents a consonant sound followed by a vowel sound. In a true syllabary there are no graphic similarities between phonetically related characters, although some do have graphic similarities for vowels. This means that the characters that represent, for example, the syllables ke, ka and ko do not have a graphic similarity to indicate the sound k that they share.
Types
A writing system that uses a syllabary is complete when it covers all the syllables that are present in the corresponding spoken language without resorting to complex spelling rules such as silent vowels, echo vowels, or implied codas.
True syllabograms are those that manage to cover all the parts of a syllable, for example, beginning, middle nucleus and final coda. However, while the onset and coda are optional in at least some languages, there are true syllabograms mid (core), onset (start-core), final (core-coda) and full (start-core-coda). Most syllabaries only show one or two types of syllabograms and form other syllables using spelling rules.
The syllabograms of syllabaries are pure, analytic, or arbitrary if they do not share graphic similarities that correspond to phonic similarities, for example, the symbol for ka does not reflect in any predictable way the symbol for ki nor the symbol for a . On the other hand, they are synthetic if they vary by beginning, nucleus or coda; and they are systematic if they vary for all of them.
Languages that use syllabaries
Languages that use the syllabary system include Japanese, Cherokee, Vai, the Yi languages of East Asia, Ndyuka – a creole language derived from English – Xiangnan Tuhua, and Mycenaean Greek (Linear B). Furthermore, some believe that the undeciphered Cretan Linear A is a syllabic script, although this has not been proven.
Chinese, Mayan and cuneiform scripts are highly syllabic systems in nature, although based on logograms, which is why they are also called logosyllabic.
Contemporary Japanese writing employs two syllabaries, called kana, hiragana and katakana, in addition to the non-syllabic systems of kanji and romaji; The kana were developed around the year 700. More than syllables, they represent moras, which are phonological units internal to the syllable and encompass one or more phonemes. They are mainly used to write words with grammatical function and inflectional affixes, as well as for foreign words, for example, hotel is ho-te-ru and is written with three kanas ホテル. As the typical Japanese syllable is mostly in the CV (consonant + vowel) form, the syllabary is well adapted for writing the language, although there are also more complex syllables (with several moras) that are written with several symbols instead of just one.
Thus, the syllabary is only a reasonable choice in languages that have mainly single syllables of type CV or similar. However, it is often argued that Japanese writing is not purely syllabic, but moraic, since each character corresponds to a mora.
Languages that use syllabaries today tend to have simple phonotactic structures, with a predominance of CV-like syllables. For example, the modern Yi script is used to write languages that do not have diphthongs or syllabic codas; unusual among syllabaries, where there is a separate glyph for each consonant-vowel-tone (CVT) combination and the language (apart from tone which is indicated by a diacritic). On the other hand, Spanish admits more complex syllabic structures, making it difficult to write using a syllabary. Characters should be different for "ba", "be", "bi", "bo", "bu", "blah" ~ "blu", "bra" ~ "bru", "bar" ~ "bur", etc.
A few syllabaries have glyphs for syllables that are not monomoraic; some were simplified over time to remove that complexity. For example, the original vai syllabary used to have separate glyphs for syllables ending in a coda (doŋ), a long vowel (soo), or a diphthong (bai), although there are not enough glyphs to distinguish all combinations of CV (some distinctions were ignored). The modern writing system has expanded to cover all moras, yet at the same time it has reduced and excluded all other syllables. Bimoraic syllables are now written with two letters, while in Japanese diphthongs are written with the help of glyphs V or hV and the nasal consonant coda is written with its own glyph, which can form a proper syllable in vai.
In the Linear B script that was used to transcribe Mycenaean Greek (a language with complex syllables), complex consonant onsets were written either with two glyphs or simplified to one. while codas were generally ignored. Example: ko-no-so for Κνωσός Knōsos, pe-ma for σπέρμα sperm.
The Cherokee syllabary generally uses dummy vowels for the consonants of the syllabic coda, but also presents graphemes for /s/ that can be used as a coda and initial consonant cluster /sC/.
Other languages with syllabic writing
Other languages that use a syllabic script include Chinese, Mycenaean Greek with Linear B, and the Cypriot syllabary; Native American languages such as Cherokee, Ojibwa, Cree or Eskimo and African languages such as Vai and Mende (or Kikaku). Cuneiform writing, made up of many different systems that serve to represent a great variety of very diverse and not always related languages, also makes use of syllabic systems, although with a certain abundance of logographic elements in already extinct languages such as Sumerian and Akkadian.; however, some cuneiform scripts, such as Ugaritic, are alphabets. Mayan writing, for its part, also makes a complex use of fusion between syllabary and logographic elements in its glyphs where polyvalent relationships of both polyphony and homophony abound.
Ethiopian and many languages of the Indian subcontinent have alphabets known as abugidas which may appear to a Westerner to be syllabary, but are not. Both use different symbols for consonants and vowels. Frequently the symbol for the vowel is added to that of the consonant, creating the impression of a syllabic unit.
Additional bibliography
- Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (editors) (1996). The Worlds Writing Systems The World's Writing Systems (in English). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
- Eschbach-Szabo, Viktoria (2008). Japanese as foreign language in the age of globalization (in English). Munich: Iudicum. ISBN 978-3-89129-854-1.