Alphabet of unusual letters. Alphabets

1. Nushu

The southern Chinese province of Hunan has used a unique alphabet called Nushu since the 12th century. The wonder of it is that Nushu is used exclusively by women. This is their secret alphabet. The fact is that before the onset of the 20th century, before the revolution in China, girls in Hunan Province were prohibited from going to school, which is why they were deprived of the opportunity to learn normal characters. The old women taught the girls the Nushu alphabet - their own, ladies' version of Chinese hieroglyphic writing.

Unlike Chinese, the letters of the Nushu alphabet represent an entire syllable. There are about a thousand of these letters. It may seem like learning 1000 characters is a very difficult task. However, educated Chinese know 7 times more signs for transmitting sounds.

2. Runes

Scandinavian epics tell that runic writing was invented by the supreme god Odin after he hung on a tree for 9 days without food or drink. The rune alphabet was used by the peoples of Northern Europe from the 1st to the 12th centuries. They not only wrote with runes, they used them to tell fortunes. Therefore, each symbol of the Varangian alphabet meant both a separate sound and a whole word filled with secret meanings.

In 1980, runic tablets for fortune telling came back into fashion and began to be used by soothsayers along with decks of Tarot cards. It is believed that runes predict the future more accurately if they are personally drawn with the blood of the god Odin.

3. Calligrams

The religions of the Near and Middle East, Judaism and Islam, have since ancient times forbidden believers to draw living creatures, so as not to create idols for themselves. And artists have come up with a surefire way to get around the ban, using the art of creating calligrams - visual images made up of small words. If we take these words from sacred texts, then they can be used to draw even a peacock, even an elephant (just not a pig, please), and no one will say anything bad.

So Islamic calligraphers got excited. Using verses from the Koran, they began to depict animals, human figures, plants, inanimate swords and mosques. Around the 9th century, Jewish artists invented the so-called. micrography is the art of creating pictures from small letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

4. Tifinagh

The ancient Libyan script "Tifinagh" comes from the ancient, highly modified Phoenician alphabet. Tifinagh is similar to the alphabet of alien invaders from science fiction movies, but it is still used in North Africa by the Berbers - the indigenous inhabitants of Morocco and Algeria. Tifinagh was also used by the indigenous inhabitants of the Canary Islands - the Guanches, who mixed with the Spaniards and adopted Latin writing. Until 2003, the use of the Ancient Libyan script was prohibited in Morocco for political reasons, but it is now the official script of the Berber people.

The most interesting thing about tifinagh is what it consists of - straight and acute angles, bold dots and perfect circles. In some ways it resembles runes, in some ways it resembles an electronic circuit. Having visited some areas of Algeria and read the signs and inscriptions on the walls, you can feel like you are on another planet. And be close to the truth.

Mysterious alphabets, like mysterious languages, die, becoming unnecessary. If a people wants to preserve its identity, it preserves its alphabet, no matter how unnecessary it may be. Thus, only an Indian can become a full member of the North American Cherokee tribe who passes an exam on knowledge of the Cherokee script, developed by the red-skinned “Clematis,” Chief Sequoyah, in 1819 on the basis of a misunderstood Latin alphabet.

Someday we will definitely visit the Indian cryptographers, and now we will continue to study the seven most unusual writing systems on Earth.

5. Voynich Manuscript

The manuscript, called the Voynich manuscript, dates back to the early 15th century and is 240 parchment pages of the greatest mystery. It is written in an unknown alphabet, unlike any other writing system, so to this day this strange manuscript with drawings has not been deciphered. There is not a single word in the book longer than 10 letters. The drawings in color depict plants, astronomical symbols and a lot of nonsense. The question arises: what was the author smoking? By the way, Voynich is a revolutionary of Russian origin who bought a mysterious script from the Jesuits in 1912. His wife wrote a bestseller from the time of our grandmothers, the novel “The Gadfly.”

To answer the question about smoking, you need to plunge into the abyss of theories. There are many versions of the authorship and language of the Voynich manuscript: this is the language invented by the author himself; it is a real language, but carefully coded; it is nonsense with a hidden message; the author did not smoke anything, he is crazy. Latest version: the text is written in the “proto-Ukrainian” language. Now the manuscript is at Yale University, and the one who solves it and translates it into human language is entitled to respect and respect.

6. Nasi

The Naxi people live in southwest China. This ethnic Lolo-Burmese minority numbers 309 thousand people. The Naxi writing system, called Naxi or Dongba, has been around for a thousand years and is so complex that it takes 15 years to learn how to use it.

The Nasi alphabet seems simple and funny, because, like a comic book, it consists of pictures - pictograms. People, animals... But in fact, in Nasi’s texts everything is very confusing, whole words either fall out of the narrative outline or are replaced by “alien” pictures. Nowadays, only a few elderly priests speak the Dongba alphabet. Young people use the Latin alphabet.

7. Witches' alphabet

An alphabet or encryption system of unknown origin, also known as the Theban alphabet. The table of correspondence between witch and Latin letters was first published in 1519 in the manuscript “Polygraphy”, and its authorship is attributed to a certain Honorius from the city of Thebes. It is unknown whether this person is real or fictitious.

Nowadays, adherents of the Western neo-pagan religion Wicca, invented by Gerald Gardner, a retired official who suddenly felt like a sorcerer, have shown interest in the Theban Letter. Wiccans believe in magic and are full of secrets. They use the witches' alphabet to write secret texts and create tattoos. It's fashionable now.

The Khmer alphabet has the largest number of letters in the Guinness Book of Records. It has 72 letters. This language is spoken in Cambodia.

However, the Ubykh alphabet contains the largest number of letters - 91 letters. The Ubykh language (the language of one of the Caucasian peoples) is considered one of the record holders for sound diversity: according to experts, it has up to 80 consonant phonemes.

Under Soviet rule, serious changes were made to the alphabets of all peoples living on the territory of the USSR: in the Russian language towards reducing the number of letters, and in other languages, mainly towards increasing them. After perestroika, the number of letters in the alphabets of many peoples living on the territory of the former Soviet republics decreased.

In modern Russian there are 33 letters. According to official sources, before the reform of Cyril and Methodius, the Russian language had 43 letters, and according to unofficial sources - 49.

The first 5 letters were thrown out by Cyril and Methodius, because there were no corresponding sounds in the Greek language, and for four they were given Greek names. Yaroslav the Wise removed one more letter, leaving 43. Peter I reduced it to 38. Nicholas II to 35. As part of Lunacharsky’s reform, the letters “yat”, “fita” and “and decimal” were excluded from the alphabet (E, F should be used instead , И), and also the hard sign (Ъ) at the end of words and parts of complex words would be excluded, but retained as a dividing sign (rise, adjutant).

In addition, Lunacharsky removed images from the Initial Letter, leaving only phonemes, i.e. the language has become unimaginative = ugly. So instead of the Primer, the Alphabet appeared.

Until 1942, it was officially believed that there were 32 letters in the Russian alphabet, since E and E were considered to be variants of the same letter.

The Ukrainian alphabet includes 33 letters: compared to Russian, Ёё, Ъъ, ыы, Ее are not used, but Ґґ, Єє, Іі and Її are present.

The Belarusian alphabet currently has 32 letters. Compared with Russian alphabet i, ь, ъ are not used, but the letters i and ў are added, and the digraphs j and d are also sometimes considered to have the status of letters.

The Yakut language uses an alphabet based on Cyrillic, which contains the entire Russian alphabet, plus five additional letters and two combinations. 4 diphthongs are also used.

The Kazakh and Bashkir Cyrillic alphabet contains 42 letters.

The current Chechen alphabet contains 49 letters (compiled on a graphical basis Russian alphabet in 1938). In 1992, the Chechen leadership decided to introduce an alphabet based on the Latin script of 41 letters. This alphabet was used to a limited extent in parallel with the Cyrillic alphabet in the period from 1992 to 2000.

The Armenian alphabet contains 38 letters, however, after the reform in 1940, the ligature "և “undeservedly received the status of a letter that does not have a capital letter - thus the number of letters became, as it were, “thirty-eight and a half.”

The Tatar alphabet after the translation of Tatar writing in 1939 from Latinized alphabet on alphabet based on Russian graphics contained 38 letters, and after 1999 an alphabet based on the Latin script of 34 letters was widely used.

The Kyrgyz Cyrillic alphabet, adopted in 1940, contains 36 letters.

The modern Mongolian alphabet contains 35 letters and differs from Russian by two additional letters: Ө and Ү.

In 1940, the Uzbek alphabet, like the alphabets of other peoples of the USSR, was translated into Cyrillic and contained 35 letters. In the 90s of the last century, the Uzbek authorities decided to translate the Uzbek language into the Latin alphabet and the alphabet became 28 letters.

The modern Georgian alphabet consists of 33 letters.

There are 31 letters in the Macedonian and Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet. The Finnish alphabet also consists of 31 letters.

The Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet includes 30 letters - compared to Russian, it lacks the letters Y, E and E.

The Tibetan alphabet consists of 30 letter-syllables, which are considered consonants. Each of them, constituting the initial letter of a syllable and not having another vowel sign, is accompanied by the sound “a” when pronounced.

The Swedish and Norwegian alphabet has 29 letters.

The Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters. The Spanish alphabet has 27 letters.

There are 26 letters in the Latin, English, German and French alphabet.

The Italian alphabet “officially” consists of 21 letters, but in reality it has 26 letters.

The Greek alphabet has 24 letters, and the standard Portuguese alphabet has 23 letters.

There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet; there is no difference between uppercase and lowercase letters.

The least number of letters in the alphabet is the Rotokas tribe from the island of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. There are only eleven of them (a, b, e, g, i, k, o, p, t, u) - 6 of them are consonants.

Considering how many letters there are in the language of one of the Papuan tribes, it is interesting that in all alphabets the number of letters gradually changes, usually downward.

A change in the number of letters in the alphabet in all countries of the world, as a rule, occurs with the advent of a new government so that the younger generation finds itself cut off from the language, literature, culture and traditions of their ancestors, and after some time speaks a completely different language.

In the modern era, there are many alphabets. There are alphabets of the peoples of the world used for communication, “dead” and lost, international and alphabets for technical purposes.

Popular alphabets

In addition to the Russian alphabet, there are other popular and in demand alphabets:

The Latin alphabet is also called the Latin alphabet, the Latin language is called Latin. The phrase “write in Cyrillic” means writing using Russian letters; the phrase “writing in Latin” generally means writing using English letters.

Each language has its own alphabet: English, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, German, Italian and others. English is considered to be an international language, it is studied in educational institutions, it is used at international conferences, it is used for negotiations, and it is often installed by default in computer programs and information systems. Most languages are a branch of the Latin language, which is why Latin is the undisputed leader in the fields of science and medicine.

International alphabet

There is an international alphabet developed in 1956 by the ICAO. This is the phonetic alphabet accepted for use by most international organizations, including NATO. The basis for its creation was the English language. The alphabet includes letters and numbers with a fixed sound. Essentially, the international alphabet is a set of sound signals. The alphabet is used for radio communications, transmission of digital codes, military signals and identification names. The alphabet is also known as the radio alphabet. In addition to the international phonetic alphabet, there are phonetic alphabets in different languages, including Russian.

Technical alphabets

Alphabets (alphabets) of a technical nature have been developed, encoding the letters of the alphabets into symbols and designations. They are used to exchange information in environments where writing or sounding conventional letters is not possible. The most popular alphabets:

Morse code (Morse code or Morse code);
Braille alphabet (the alphabet for the visually impaired and blind or the Braille alphabet);
Zhestuno alphabet (the alphabet of the deaf and dumb or the dactyl alphabet);
semaphore alphabet (flag alphabet).

History of the alphabet

Today it is difficult to imagine the life of mankind without the alphabet. However, once upon a time he was not there. It is interesting to look at the origins of the first alphabets, to understand the idea of their creation, the first experience of use.

With the development of Homo sapiens, an urgent need arose to develop a unified way of transmitting history, advice and traditions from generation to generation. Initially, drawings and spoken word were used to solve this problem. The carriers of information were people who passed on their knowledge to generations through speech. However, this method was ineffective. The accumulation of knowledge, changes in speech concepts and the subjective perception of oral transmission of data led to inaccuracies and the loss of many important aspects of history. Therefore, humanity is faced with the need to develop a unified system for transferring accumulated knowledge.

Northern Syria is considered the ancestor of the alphabet; the creation of the alphabet marked the beginning of the development of writing. Egypt is called the ancestor of writing, but it was used in the 27th century BC. Egyptian hieroglyphs cannot be considered an alphabet in the usual sense. Over time, the alphabet developed, changed by various peoples, and new systems and letters were developed.

The word “alphabet” itself has an ancient history; the word appeared after the emergence of the first alphabet, only 700 years later. The word “alphabet” in its familiar sound appeared in the Phoenician alphabet by combining its first two letters into one word.

After the emergence of the alphabet in the Middle East around 2000 BC. Writing systems from different languages and cultures have risen and died. The classic example is the Egyptian system. The legacy of this highly developed civilization is contained in the famous hieroglyphic script, which humanity has never been able to fully decipher.

Over the past 2,500 years, the Latin alphabet has become so popular that it has suppressed the writing of the peoples who once dominated the Romans. However, more than two billion people still use other forms of writing, and some of them display truly impressive handicraft skills.

We've rounded up 5 of the world's most aesthetically pleasing alphabets and explained why you'll likely never learn to read them.

Burmese (Myanmar)

The Burmese alphabet consists of circular shapes that are always drawn clockwise. Despite the fact that the threat of extinction of this writing is the least significant compared to the rest of the participants in our rating, now the Burmese alphabet is often used only during sacred rites, and in everyday life it is replaced by Hindi and even the Latin writing system.

Sinhala (Sri Lanka)

It is considered one of the most extensive alphabets in the world, with more than 50 phonemes. Although modern writing uses only 38 phonemes. This language, which is native to half of Sri Lanka's population (almost 10.5 million inhabitants), is taught in Buddhist monasteries and schools. Due to its low geographic distribution, it is endangered.

Georgian (Georgia)

Situated between Turkey and Russia, Georgia has its own alphabet and language, which are endangered due to the widespread and predominant Russian language. The Georgian alphabet exhibits an elegance similar to the Arabic, combined with a childlike simplicity expressed in rounded curves.

Tagalog (Philippines)

Originating from the Indo-European group, Tagalog remained the dominant writing system in the Philippines until the arrival of the Spaniards. At first, colonization changed only certain aspects of the alphabet. But then Spanish became the official language of the Philippines, which dealt a fatal blow to the traditional writing system.

Hanakaraka (Indonesia)

Originally originating on the island of Java, the Hanakaraka writing system began to spread to neighboring islands and develop regional variations. There were repeated attempts to standardize the alphabet in the 19th and 20th centuries, but these efforts were interrupted by the Japanese occupation during World War II, when the use of the Hanakaraka script was banned. Since then, the alphabet has been supplanted by the Latin writing system.

Speech at Science Day

Topic: “Letters of different alphabets”

History of the origin of the alphabet

The students of grade 1A and I, considering this topic for a whole month, studied in detail the history of different alphabets. The guys defended their projects.

We talked about the emergence of writing, the history of the origin of the Russian alphabet, and also got acquainted with the history of Greek, Latin, Chinese, English, German, Spanish and even Elvish alphabets.

The history and development of each of these alphabets is interesting and even unique in its own way. And today we would like to bring to your attention several projects on this topic.

How did the first alphabet appear on earth?

Writing appeared in Ancient Sumer. It was a syllabary writing system, in which words did not yet consist of letters, but of syllables. This type of writing was used not only by the Sumerians, but also by the inhabitants of Crete, Easter Island, the ancient Egyptians, Persians, Babylonians, Icarians, Greeks and Phoenicians.

Compared to picture writing, it was more convenient. Writing became easier, but only until the number of words increased hundreds of times and it was no longer possible to remember all the syllables denoting different words.

And so people thought, is it possible to divide the word into parts smaller than syllables? Divide the word into letters! So that each letter represents each vowel and consonant sound!

Scientists do not have a single point of view on the origin of the first alphabet, but, most likely, this brilliant idea did not appear as a result of the sudden insight of one person, but came to people gradually, like all changes in language.

Perhaps at first, some peoples developed letters that denoted consonant sounds, but also carried some other vowel sound. For example, there were 22 such syllabic consonants in the Phoenician language. The Phoenicians had enough of them, because in this language it was the consonant sounds that carried the main conceptual load.

Such a letter was not enough for the Greeks. In their writing, vowel sounds played an important role, and the Greeks, taking the Phoenician syllabary as a basis, improved it. They decomposed the Phoenician syllabic writing separately into vowels and consonants!

So syllabic signs turned into letters that conveyed complex sounds, and individual sounds of human speech. This is how the first alphabet appeared!

The word "alphabet" comes from the name of the first two Greek letters - alpha and beta.

Now there are dozens of alphabets, but they all go back to the first alphabet, born on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea more than three thousand years ago.

The alphabet is:

A set of letters and other signs of this writing system.

The order of letters adopted in the alphabet.

Index, list of something. According to the order of letters adopted in the alphabet.