A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary typically represents an optional consonant sound followed by a vowel sound. A syllable (Ancient Greek: ) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. ... A word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together. ... In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

Languages using syllabaries

Languages that use syllabic writing include Mycenaean Greek (Linear B), the Native American language Cherokee, the African language Vai, the English-based creole language Ndyuka (the Afaka script), and the Moso language of China (the Nü Shu syllabary). The Chinese, Cuneiform, and Maya scripts are largely syllabic in nature, although based on logograms. They are therefore sometimes referred to as logosyllabic. Taiwanese learn a syllabic script called Bopomofo before beginning to learn more cumbersome Chinese characters. A clay tablet with writing in Linear B from Mycenae. ... Linear B script sample Linear B is a script that was used for writing Mycenaean, an early form of Greek. ... Cherokee is an Iroquoian language spoken by the Cherokee people. ... The Vai are an ethnic group living in Liberia and Sierra Leone. ... A creole language, or just creole, is a well-defined and stable language that originated from a non-trivial combination of two or more languages, typically with many distinctive features that are not inherited from either parent. ... Ndyuka (or Ndjuka, officially Ndyukátongo) is a language of Suriname. ... The Afaka script (afaka sikifi) is a syllabary of 56 letters devised in 1908 for the Ndyuka language, an English creole of Surinam. ... Yi (also Moso, Lolo, Noso, ) is a family of closely related Tibeto-Burman languages spoken by the Yi people. ... Nü Shu written in Nü Shu (right to left). ... Cuneiform script The Cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. ... Maya glyphs in stucco at the Museo de sitio in Palenque, Mexico The Maya script, commonly known as Maya hieroglyphs, was the writing system of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica. ... A logogram, or logograph, is a single grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). ... Zhuyin Fuhao (Traditional Chinese: 注音符號; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chu-yin fu-hao), or Symbols for Annotating Sounds, often abbreviated as Zhuyin, or known as Bopomofo (ㄅㄆㄇㄈ) after the first four letters of this Chinese phonemic alphabet (bo po mo fo), is the national phonetic system of the Republic of China (Taiwan...

The Japanese language uses two syllabaries, namely hiragana and katakana (developed around 700 AD). They are mainly used to write some native words and grammatical elements, as well as foreign words, e.g. hotel is written with three kana, ホテル (ho-te-ru), in Japanese. Because Japanese uses a lot of CV (consonant + vowel) syllables, a syllabary is well suited to write the language. As in many syllabaries, however, vowel sequences and final consonants are written with separate glyphs, so that both atta and kaita are written with three kana: あった (a-t-ta) and かいた (ka-i-ta). It is therefore sometimes called a moraic writing system. Japanese (日本語,  ) is a language spoken by over 130 million people, mainly in Japan, but also by Japanese emigrant communities around the world. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 Hiragana ) are a Japanese syllabary, one of the four Japanese writing systems, along with katakana, kanji and rōmaji (i. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Mora (plural moras or morae) is a unit of sound used in phonology that determines syllable weight (which in turn determines stress) in some languages. ...

Difference between an abugida and a syllabary

Indian languages and Ethiopian languages have a type of alphabet called an abugida or alphasyllabary. These are sometimes mistaken for syllabaries, but unlike in syllabaries, all syllables starting with the same consonant are based on the same symbol, and generally more than one symbol is needed to represent a syllable. In the 19th century these systems were called syllabics, a term which has survived in the name of Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics (also an abugida). In a true syllabary there is no systematic graphic similarity between phonetically related characters (though some do have graphic similarity for the vowels). That is, the characters for "ke", "ka", and "ko" have no similarity to indicate their common "k"-ness. Compare abugida, where each grapheme typically represents a syllable but where characters representing related sounds are similar graphically (typically, a common consonantal base is annotated in a more or less consistent manner to represent the vowel in the syllable). The article describes the languages spoken in the Republic of India. ... Ethiopic languages is a language group which together with Old South Arabian forms the Western branch of the South Semitic languages. ... Alphabet is the current Good Article Collaboration of the week! Please help to improve this article to the highest of standards. ... An abugida or alphasyllabary is a writing system composed of signs (graphemes) denoting consonants with an inherent following vowel, which are consistently modified to indicate other vowels (or, in some cases, the lack of a vowel). ... Canadian aboriginal syllabic writing (often syllabics for short) is a family of writing schemes which are used to write a number of aboriginal Canadian languages from the Algonquian, Athabaskan and Inuit language families. ... An abugida or alphasyllabary is a writing system composed of signs (graphemes) denoting consonants with an inherent following vowel, which are consistently modified to indicate other vowels (or, in some cases, the lack of a vowel). ... A grapheme designates the atomic unit in written language. ...

Comparison to English alphabet

The English language, on the other hand, allows more complex syllable structures, making it cumbersome to write English words with a syllabary. A "pure" syllabary would require a separate glyph for every syllable in English. Thus one would need separate symbols for "bag," "beg," "big," "bog," "bug" ; "bad," "bed," "bid," "bod," "bud," etc. However, such pure systems are rare. A work-around to this problem, common to several syllabaries around the world (including English loanwords in Japanese), is to write an echo vowel, as if the syllable coda was a second syllable: ba-ga or ba-gi for "bag", etc. Another common approach is to simply ignore the coda, so that "bag" would be written ba. This obviously would not work well for English, but was done in Mycenean Greek when the root word was two or three syllables long and the syllable coda was a weak consonant such as n or s (example: chrysos written as ku-ru-so). The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ...

See also

• List of syllabaries

A list of writing systems (or scripts), classified according to some common distinguishing features. ...

Other types of writing systems

• Abugida
• Abjad
• Alphabet
• Logogram

An abugida or alphasyllabary is a writing system composed of signs (graphemes) denoting consonants with an inherent following vowel, which are consistently modified to indicate other vowels (or, in some cases, the lack of a vowel). ... An abjad is a type of writing system where there is one symbol per consonantal phoneme, sometimes also called a consonantary. ... Alphabet is the current Good Article Collaboration of the week! Please help to improve this article to the highest of standards. ... A logogram, or logograph, is a single grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). ...

External links

• Syllabaries - Omniglot's list of syllabaries and abugidas, including examples of various writing systems