FACTOID # 170: Apparently, the Federated States of Micronesia is the place to leave - and Afghanistan is the place to go.
 
 Home   Encyclopedia   Statistics   Countries A-Z   Flags   Maps   Education   Forum   FAQ   About 
 
WHAT'S NEW
RECENT ARTICLES
More Recent Articles »
 

SEARCH ALL

FACTS & STATISTICS    Advanced view

Search encyclopedia, statistics and forums:

 

 

(* = Graphable)

 

 


Encyclopedia > Old Persian cuneiform script
Old Persian Cuneiform
Type: Alphabet with Syllabic elements
Languages: Old Persian
Time period: 525 BC – 330 BC
Parent writing systems: Cuneiform script
Old Persian Cuneiform
Unicode range: U+103A0 – U+103D5
ISO 15924 code: Xpeo
 

Old Persian cuneiform is the primary script used in Old Persian writings. It is a semi-alphabetic syllabic cuneiform script. A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ... This article discusses the unit of speech. ... Sketch of the first column of the Behistun Inscription Old Persian is the oldest attested Persid language. ...   The cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. ... Because of technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... Download high resolution version (1000x331, 137 KB)Behistun Inscription, Column 1 (DB I 1-15) Sketch: Fr. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... Because of technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... This is a concise version of the International Phonetic Alphabet for English sounds. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Sketch of the first column of the Behistun Inscription Old Persian is the oldest attested Persid language. ...   The cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. ...


Old Persian cuneiform is derived from the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, however only one glyph, L, derives from that script. (L didn't occur in native Old Persian words, but was found in Akkadian borrowings.) Scholars today mostly agree that the Old Persian script was invented by about 525 BC to provide monument inscriptions for the Achaemenid king Darius the Great. Sumer (or Shumer, Egyptian Sangar, Bib. ... Akkadian (lišānum akkadÄ«tum) was a Semitic language (part of the greater Afro-Asiatic language family) spoken in ancient Mesopotamia, particularly by the Assyrians and Babylonians. ...   The cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. ... Centuries: 7th century BC - 6th century BC - 5th century BC Decades: 570s BC - 560s BC - 550s BC - 540s BC - 530s BC - 520s BC - 510s BC - 500s BC - 490s BC - 480s BC - 470s BC Events 529 BC - Cambyses II succeeds his father Cyrus as ruler of Persia. ... Achaemenid Empire The Achaemenid Dynasty was a dynasty in the ancient Persian Empire, including Cyrus II the Great, Darius I and Xerxes I. At the height of their power, the Achaemenid rulers of Persia ruled over territories roughly emcompassing some parts of todays Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon... Darius I of Persia Darius the Great (Darayawush I) (ca. ...


Although based on a logo-syllabic prototype, the system is essentially alphabetic in character. 13 out of 22 consonants are invariant, regardless of the following vowel (that is, they are alphabetic), while only 6 have a distinct form for each consonant-vowel combination (that is, they are syllabic), and among these, only d and m occur in three forms for all three vowels. (k, g, j, v only occur before two of the vowels, and so only have two forms.) In addition, 3 consonants, t, n, r, are partially syllabic, having the same form before a and i, and a distinct form only before u. For instance, =< could be na or ni, whereas <<= is specifically nu. Ambiguous syllables such as =< na/ni must be followed by a vowel for clarification, but in practice even unambiguous syllables such as <<= nu, or fully syllabic ma, mi, mu, are followed by explicit vowels.


The effect is not unlike the English [dʒ] sound, which is typically written g before i or e, but j before other vowels (gem, jam), or the Castillian Spanish [θ] sound, which is written c before i or e and z before other vowels (cinco, zapato). It is more accurate to say that some of the Old Persian consonants are written by different letters depending on the following vowel, rather than classifying the script as syllabic. This situation had its origin in the Assyrian cuneiform syllabary, where several syllabic distinctions had been lost and were often clarified with explicit vowels. However, in the case of Assyrian, the vowel was not always used, and was never used where not needed, so the system remained (logo-) syllabic. Assyrian Empire Assyria in earliest historical times referred to a region on the Upper Tigris river, named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur. ...


For a while it was speculated that the alphabet could have had its origin in such a system, with a leveling of consonant signs a millennium earlier producing something like the Ugaritic alphabet, but today it is generally accepted that the Semitic alphabet arose from Egyptian hieroglyphs, where vowel notation was not important. (See Middle Bronze Age alphabets.) The Ugaritic alphabet is a cuneiform version of the Levantine consonant alphabet (abjad), used from around 1300 BC for the Ugaritic language, an extinct Canaanite language discovered in Ugarit, Syria. ... A hieroglyph is one part of an ideographic writing system that is often found carved in stone. ... The Middle Bronze Age alphabets are two similar but undeciphered scripts, dated to be from the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 BCE), and believed to be ancestral to nearly all modern alphabets: the Proto-Sinaitic script discovered in the winter of 1904-1905 by William Flinders Petrie, and dated to...


The Old Persian script is encoded in Plane 1 (Supplementary Multilingual Plane) of Unicode 4.1, occupying code points 103A0–103DF. Unicode reserves 1,114,112 (= 220 + 216) code points, and currently assigns characters to more than 96,000 of those code points. ... Because of technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ...


External links



 

COMMENTARY     


Share your thoughts, questions and commentary here
Your name
Your comments
Please enter the 5-letter protection code

Want to know more?
Search encyclopedia, statistics and forums:

 


Lesson Plans | Student Area | Student FAQ | Reviews | Press Releases |  Feeds | Contact
The Wikipedia article included on this page is licensed under the GFDL.
Images may be subject to relevant owners' copyright.
All other elements are (c) copyright NationMaster.com 2003-5. All Rights Reserved.
Usage implies agreement with terms.