Is there an alphabet? If yes, how many letters? What do they represent? Are there significant differences between manuscript and print? Has the system changed over time?
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The Hebrew alphabet is very different from the English one. Not all Hebrew letters correspond to English letters and there are many sounds that are different than any sounds in English. I spent a couple of weeks deciding to learn script or print since no one really writes in print anymore and the alphabets are very different (for me at least). People used to write in print more often but now almost all writing is in script. I decided I want to learn print since most of the signage in Israel is in print and so are most religious texts. When you learn the alphabet you also have to learn the vowels. There are over 10 vowel signs in addition to the alphabet that you need to learn when starting to learn Hebrew but after about first grade they are never written. I have not take the step of not using vowels and do not know if I will be able to do that this semester.
Hindi language is written in Devanagari alphabet and draws vocabulary from Sanskrit. The alphabet consists of 40 consonants 10 vowels and 2 modifiers, 4 common conjunct consonants made out of 2 or 3 letters to form one. Devanagari is a form of alphabet called an abugida, as each consonant has an inherent vowel that can be changed with the different vowel signs. Most consonants can be joined to one or two other consonants so that the inherent vowel is suppressed. The resulting form is called a ligature. Devanagari is written from left to right. Devanagari has no case distinction, i.e. no majuscule and minuscule letters.
Sanskrit spelling was phonetic, but the spelling of modern languages written in Devanagari may only be partly phonetic in the sense that a word written in it can only be pronounced in one way, but not all possible pronunciations can be written perfectly.
To input some characters of the Hindi alphabet, which are not present on the LingvoSoft Virtual Keyboard, you have to enter a sequence of several Hindi symbols. These symbols, entered from the LingvoSoft Virtual Keyboard, will then be combined together to constitute the requisite character.
What is the LingvoSoft Virtual Keyboard? Do you know how to type in the Mac and/or Windows OS?
The Hebrew alphabet (called the aleph-bet) has 22 letters, although some of the letters have different forms when at the end of words, etc. The alphabet also has a separate system of vowels that go underneath or beside the letters, making it very difficult to understand, because in Israel, they write and read without vowels! That is something I am going to have to get used to. I know that kids learn to read with vowels, but eventually I will need to master guessing how to read words "lk ths" - it is so weird! The system of manuscript is fairly different than script, I learned both when I was going through Hebrew school and now I have forgotten script. I am re-learning manuscript with my language partner but when I see script, relearning manuscript is not helping me all that much in my ability to remember script. The alphabet has been the same for a long time, for at least 2000 years. When it is written in the Torah or other old documents, the letters look a little bit different, a little bit "older" and "more dignified" but overall they still are very similar.
Hindi is written in Devanagari script. This is a very different script than that used by western languages. Their alphabet also contains many sounds non-existent in western languages. This has made it very difficult for me to learn Hindi. In English-Hindi dictionaries, the english word is written in english, and then the Hindi word is written in the Devanagari script. I, however, cannot read the script, so I cannot determine what the Hindi version of the word is. Also, while learning how to speak, my peers helping me have been attempting to help me hear the difference in the different sounds of the hindi vowels and consonants. However, seeing as I did not grow up learning these differences, and being used to the western languages - english and hindi - it is very difficult for me to hear the differences, let alone pronounce them. However, with much hard work and patience from my language partner, I am beginning to learn them.
So Swedish uses the same alphabet as English but they have three more vowels than English. So I guess that makes for 29 letters! In Swedish, the letter Y is always a vowel, which is something different from English where Y can be both a vowel and a consonant. Swedish is spelled in a way that is much more phonetic so it is easier to know how to spell a word based on hearing it. Very rarely are their words I can't spell because they are irregular in some way. The only difference between script and manuscript Swedish is that Swedes have developed a shorthand for marking their three extra vowels (Å, Ä, and Ö). Although that is what it looks like when typed, Swedes typically do not write out all the rings and dots on the top of those letters when they are scribbling by hand. I think that throughout time this system has been pretty static.
The Ukrainian language has an alphabet that comprises of thirty three letters, representing thirty eight phonemes (meaningful units of sound), and an additional sign being the apostrophe. The differences between manuscript and print are slight for the most part, however there are some letters of the alphabet that look relatively different in the two different forms. Ukrainian text is sometimes romanized: written in the Latin alphabet, for non-Cyrillic readers or transcription systems. There have also been several historical proposals for a native Latin alphabet for Ukrainian, but none have caught on. Twenty letters represent consonants (б, г, ґ, д, ж, з, к, л, м, н, п, р, с, т, ф, х, ц, ч, ш, щ), ten vowels (а, е, є, и, і, ї, о, у, ю, я), and two semivowels (й/yot, and в). The soft sign: ь has no phonetic value, but indicates softening (palatalization ) of a preceding consonant. The system was initially the Cyrillic script system followed by nineteenth century reforms In reaction to the hard-to-learn etymological alphabets, which attempted to introduce a phonemic Ukrainian orthography during the nineteenth century.Finally in 1925, the Ukrainian SSr created a Commission for the Regulation of Orthography which reflects the Ukrainian language as we know it today.
The Swedish Alphabet is pretty similar to the alphabet we use in English, except for the fact they have three extra letters after z: Å/å, Ä/ä, and Ö/ö. They have a lot of grammar rules that I am still struggling to understand, such as which vowels are hard vowels and which ones are soft vowels and when put next to a certain letter what sound they make. I suppose there are just as many rules like this in English but since I was raised speaking it I don't really recall learning all of the grammar aspects of it.