Orthography
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An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word boundaries, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system,[a] and most of these systems have undergone substantial standardization, thus exhibiting less dialect variation than the spoken language.[1][2] These processes can fossilize pronunciation patterns that are no longer routinely observed in speech (e.g., "would" and "should"); they can also reflect deliberate efforts to introduce variability for the sake of national identity, as seen in Noah Webster's efforts to introduce easily noticeable differences between American and British spelling (e.g., "honor" and "honour").
Some nations (e.g.
Etymology and meaning
The
Orthography is largely concerned with matters of spelling, and in particular the relationship between phonemes and graphemes in a language.[4][5] Other elements that may be considered part of orthography include hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks/boundaries, emphasis, and punctuation.[6] Orthography thus describes or defines the set of symbols used in writing a language and the conventions that broadly regulate their use.
Most
Units and notation
Orthographic units, such as letters of an
Graphemes or sequences of them are sometimes placed between angle brackets, as in ⟨b⟩ or ⟨back⟩. This distinguishes them from phonemic transcription, which is placed between slashes (/b/, /bæk/), and from phonetic transcription, which is placed between square brackets ([b], [bæk]).
Types
The
Correspondence with pronunciation
Orthographies that use
An orthography in which the correspondences between spelling and pronunciation are highly complex or inconsistent is called a
One of the main reasons why spelling and pronunciation diverge is that
The
Korean hangul and Tibetan scripts were also originally extremely shallow orthographies, but as a representation of the modern language those frequently also reflect morphophonemic features.
For full discussion of degrees of correspondence between spelling and pronunciation in alphabetic orthographies, including reasons why such correspondence may break down, see Phonemic orthography.
Defective orthographies
An orthography based on the principle that symbols correspond to phonemes may, in some cases, lack characters to represent all the phonemes or all the phonemic distinctions in the language. This is called a
When an alphabet is borrowed from its original language for use with a new language—as has been done with the
After the classical period, Greek developed a lowercase letter system that introduced diacritic marks to enable foreigners to learn pronunciation and in some cases, grammatical features. However, as pronunciation of letters changed over time, the diacritic marks were reduced to representing the stressed syllable. In Modern Greek typesetting, this system has been simplified to only have a single accent to indicate which syllable is stressed.[8]
See also
- Cursive
- Grapheme
- Keyboard layout
- Lateral masking
- Leet
- List of language disorders
- Palaeography
- Penmanship
- Prescription and description
- Romanization
- Writing
- Writing system
Notes
- ^ Many local languages have a writing system too, but the majority do not.
References
- ISBN 978-3-11-014189-4
- ^ Coulmas, Florian; Guerini, Federica (2012), "Literacy and Writing Reform", in Spolsky, Bernard (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Language Policy, Cambridge University Press, p. 454f
- ^ "orthography". Online Etymology Dictionary.
- ^ Seidenberg, Mark S. 1992. "Beyond Orthographic Depth in Reading: Equitable Division of Labor." In: Ram Frost & Leonard Katz (eds.). Ortho545fgraphy, Phonology, Morphology, and Meaning, pp. 85–118. Amsterdam: Elsevier, p. 93.
- ^ Donohue, Mark. 2007. "Lexicography for Your Friends." In Terry Crowley, Jeff Siegel, & Diana Eades (eds.). Language Description, History and Development: Linguistic Indulgence in Memory of Terry Crowley. pp. 395–406. Amsterdam: Benjamins, p. 396.
- ^ Coulmas, Florian. 1996. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems. Oxford: Blackwell, p. 379.
- ^ Koda, Keiko; Zehler, Annette M. (Mar 3, 2008). Learning to Read Across Languages. Routledge. p. 17.
- S2CID 146449153.
Further reading
- Cahill, Michael; Rice, Keren (2014). Developing Orthographies for Unwritten Languages. Dallas, Tx: SIL International. ISBN 978-1-55671-347-7.
- Smalley, W. A. (ed.) 1964. Orthography studies: articles on new writing systems (United Bible Society, London).
- Venezky, Richard L.; Trabasso, Tom (2005). From orthography to pedagogy: essays in honor of Richard L. Venezky. Hillsdale, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum. OCLC 475457315.
External links
- Videos: The History and Impact of Writing in the West
- Phonemic awareness page of the CTER wiki
- lonestar.texas.net/~jebbo/learn-as/ orthography of Old English