The World - Scripts (writing systems)
Tourism
978-3-14-100890-6 | Page 43 | Ill. 3
Overview
Writing came into being much later than language. The first script to represent words, syllables and letters in writing was the Sumerian cuneiform script, which originated in Mesopotamia at the end of the 4th millennium BC.
Writing systems
The spread of writing also has to do with the spread of religions. Regions that are primarily Catholic and Protestant use the Latin script, Christian Orthodox regions use the Cyrillic or Greek script and Islamic regions use the Arabic script. The Indian writing system came to Southeast Asia with Buddhism, the Chinese script to Korea and Japan via Chinese monks.
The most important writing systems are the Latin, Arabic, Cyrillic and Chinese scripts. The Latin and Cyrillic scripts belong to the alphabetic scripts. They consist of letters that are sorted in a certain order - the alphabet. Each letter makes a sound. The Arabic script belongs to the consonant scripts. The 28 characters consist only of consonants, there are no vowels. It is written from right to left. The Chinese script, on the other hand, belongs to the logographic scripts. Each of the approximately 87,000 characters has a specific meaning. It does not stand for a sound, so there is no alphabet. Other well-known logographic scripts are the Egyptian hieroglyphics and the cuneiform script.
