Is there an alphabet? If yes, how many letters? What do they represent? Are there significant differences between manuscript and print? If there is no alphabet, how does the language convey information in written form? Are there related writing systems?
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There is an alphabet in Gujarati. It is an "abugida" which means it is a segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as a unit. For example, in English, this would be a typical equivalent:
ba, ca, da, fa, ga
be, ce, de, fe, ge
bi, ci, di, fe, gi.....
[b,c,d,f,g would be the consonant, and -a,-e,-i be the attached vowel]
Contrary to the English alphabet, the Gujarati alphabet consist of 34 consonants. In addition, the consonants make up the alphabet, with the vowels added on to each consonant. There are 12 official vowels. There are not significant differences between manuscript and print.
I found it interesting that opposed to English where you write on the floor of the line, in Gujarati you write on the ceiling of the line. I also discovered that the grammatical structure of Gujarati is different than English.
Example: I am playing with the ball.
Translated in Gujarati: I ball will playing am.
You're the first person who has explained the 'ceiling of the line' writing in South Asian. Thank you.
Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language. Hindi has its own alphabets and, therefore, writing is going to be my biggest challenge. The alphabets, although different, still follow the system of a, b, c, d. Learning how to write is one of my most important goals for this semester.
The Hindi alphabet is divided into two parts: vowels and consonants. There are twelve vowels and 33 consonants. The role of vowels in Hindi is slightly different than it is in English. In Hindi, vowels are combined with consonants to create different sounds and various pronunciations. The consonant ka can be combined with vowel a to create the sounds kaa. As far is writing Hindi goes, one basic rule is that you have to draw a line above every single alphabet.
Yes, the Korean language has an alphabet system. The writing system is called "Hangul" which is made of an alphabet of 21 vowels and 19 consonants. Each "letter" is a symbol so it is very different from the American writing system and from cyrillic alphabet. Aside from learning Japanese for 2 semesters, I am mostly used to writing and reading in the cyrillic alphabet so this will be another good challenge for me.
Farsi uses a variant of the Arabic alphabet called the Perso-Arabic script, which has four letters added to it (پ [peh], چ [[cheh], ژ [zheh], and گ [gaf]) to represent sounds in Farsi that are not found in Arabic. (The letter و, vav, is also used to represent the "v" sound in Farsi, while is represents a "w" sound in Arabic.) There are 32 letters in the Farsi alphabet, all representing distinct sounds in the Farsi language. Farsi is read and written from right to left, although numbers are read and written from left to right.
Manuscript and print, unlike in many languages, are actually written the same. Farsi is only written in cursive -- the majority of the letters connect to each other, even when typed on the computer.
Related writing systems include all languages which use the Arabic script or a variant of it, such as Arabic, Urdu, Pashto, Dari, and Kurdish.
Urdu has been written with a version of the Perso-Arabic script since the 12th century and is normally written in Nastaliq style from right to left.
Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language with about 104 million speakers, including those who speak it as a second language. It is the national language of Pakistan and is closely related to and mutually intelligible with Hindi, though a lot of Urdu vocabulary comes from Persian and Arabic languages.
There are 32 letters, and each represent a different sound. The main difference between Arabic an Urdu alphabet is the addition of few letters in Urdu alphabet. For example,( پ ) which sounds like (P) is included in Urdu Alphabet, but in Arabic there is no letter such as (P). I guess, there are no significant differences between manuscript and print in Urdu language. however, because this language is so old, there are still thousands or books in manuscripts.
Is the use of the Perso-Arabic script related to the conquest of the area by Islam? How was the language written before the 12th century?