Sogdian alphabet

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Sogdian
Type:	Abjad
Languages:	Sogdian, Old Uyghur
Time period:	Late Antiquity
Parent writing systems:	Phoenician Aramaic Syriac Sogdian
Child writing systems:	Mongolian Orkhon script
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

The Sogdian alphabet, also called the Old Uyghur alphabet is derived from Syriac, the descendant script of the Aramaic alphabet.

History of the Alphabet
Middle Bronze Age 19–15th c. BC Canaanite-Phoenician 14th c. BC Paleo-Hebrew 10th c. BC Aramaic 9th c. BC Brāhmī & Indic 6th c. BC Tibetan 7th c. Khmer/Javanese 9th c. Hebrew 3rd c. BC Syriac 2nd c. BC Nabatean 2nd c. BC Arabic 4th c. Pahlavi 2nd c. BC Avestan 4th c. Greek 9th c. BC Etruscan 8th c. BC Latin 7th c. BC Runes 2nd c. Ogham 4th c. Gothic 4th c. Armenian 405 Glagolitic 862 Cyrillic 10th c. Samaritan 6th c. BC Iberian 6th c. BC Epigraphic South Arabian 9th c. BC Ge'ez 5–6th c. BC
Meroitic 3rd c. BC
Hangul 1443
Zhuyin 1913
Complete genealogy

It is occasionally known as the sutra script, and is similar to the script of the ancient letters used in writing on papyri. Many Buddhist, Manichaean, Nestorian, and Zoroastrian texts as well as all secular material such as letters, legal documents, coin legends, and inscriptions were written in this script. Sogdian was written either in horizontal and sometimes in vertical direction, the latter probably under Chinese influence, but with the first vertical line starting from the left side, not from the right as in Chinese, most probably because the right-to-left direction was used in horizontal writing. The Mongolian alphabet proper still uses this kind of vertical writing, introduced by the Sogdians.

1 Khitan Small Script
2 See also
3 References
4 Works Cited
5 External link

[edit] Khitan Small Script

Khitan small script was developed in the mid-920s after a delegation from the Uyghur visited the capital of the Khitan empire at Shangjing. Abaoji, also known as Emperor Taizu, ordered the development of this second script, after the Khitan large script was developed earlier in the decade. ^[1] It seems likely, though it is uncertain, that the Sogdian alphabet influenced the formation of the Khitan small script to at least some degree.