Talk:Genealogy of scripts derived from Proto-Sinaitic

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We don't know that there was more than one Middle Bronze Age alphabet. Proto-Sinaitic and Wadi el-Ħôl may have been the same thing - we won't know until we decipher them.

Kana and Thaana are not descendents, so I'm removing them from the list. kwami 07:00, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Llull added Cherokee as a descendant of Latin a couple days a go, but I'm not sure it can be called a graphic descendant. Some of the letter shapes probably have Latin influence, but they have been reassigned completely new sounds with no similarity or bearing on the original. So I'm wondering if it should be listed with all the others, where there is at least some degree of one-on-one correspondence. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 14:18, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

It's pretty clearly directly taken from 18th century US publications such as newspapers. I don't know if there was an influence from cursive (there are a lot of "squiggly" elements). But while it's a graphic descendant of Latin, the system hasn't been inherited. I guess we need to decide if we want to restrict "descendant" to scripts that inherited the alphabetic principle from Semitic. (There are Latin-based syllabaries in Micronesia, for example, and then there's the Frasier script in SE Asia.) kwami 17:24, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I feel the criterion ought to be what I called "some degree of graphic one-on-one correspondence". In every other script listed besides Cherokee, the letters / glyphs / whatever in each new script were at least partly based on letters in the preceding script, with the same or similar sounds. The one-on-one relationship can be traced going all the way back until you get to Proto-Sinaitic / Middle Age Bronze, which first assigned new sound values to Egyptian hieroglyphs based on their Semitic language. Since then, every script on the list has adopted or modified at least some of that reassignment, so that for instance our letter B can be graphically traced back to a glyph that kept the same sound value, the only change occurred when the Semites changed it from "pr" to "b". CHerokee assigns completely new sound values with no similarity, so the resemblances are in a sense superficial. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 17:49, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you put that better than I did. I went ahead and deleted. If we retain Cherokee, I think that is should at least be put in parentheses to show it's not an evolution from the Latin. Better yet might be to mention it in the body of the text and leave it out of the table altogether. kwami 19:54, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Chosŏn'gŭl 2 Turdetan script 3 Nepali 4 Canadian syllabics 5 "Parthian abjad" 6 sources

[edit] Chosŏn'gŭl

Chosŏn'gŭl (Han'gŭl) is not derived from Proto-Sinaitic. I've removed it from the list. —Babelfisch 06:33, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Were you aware that a scholar named Gari Ledyard claims to be able to trace Hangul to Phagspa, and if he is correct, it is thereby possible that almost all of the Korean Jamo can actually be traced all the way to just five Egyptian hieroglyphs?

Namely,

--ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 03:40, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

No, I was not aware of that, but it is obviously not widely accepted. —Babelfisch 08:07, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Can we change "Hangul is also considered a separate invention by some scholars" to "Hangul is also considered a separate invention by most scholars". Gari Ledyard's theory is interesting, but I don't think it is fair to call it the mainstream opinion ('some scholars' seems to imply a minority to me, whereras Dr. Ledyard is most likely in the minority)Zippyt 11:19, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

That should be quite easy to demonstrate, simply by citing the scholars that disagree... Even if you cite only two scholars who specifically disagree with Ledyard, he will be outnumbered 2 to 1. At present, the number of cites is 1 to 0, in favour. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 14:41, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Not even Ledyard advances the theory that the 'phags-pa alphabet is a major source for Hangul. In his 1966 book The Korean Language Reform of 1446, which is the original source for the 'phags-pa theory, he says:

I have devoted much space and discussion to the role of the Mongol 'phags-pa alphabet in the origin of the Korean alphabet, but it should be clear to any reader that, in the total picture, that role was quite limited.

And:

The origin of the Korean alphabet is, in fact, not a simple matter at all. ... Nothing would disturb me more, after this study is published, than to discover in a work on the history of writing a statement like the following: "According to recent investigations, the Korean alphabet was derived from the Mongol 'phags-pa script..."

(pages 366 and 368, respectively.)

According to Ledyard, the great majority of the design of Hangul was original, and not influenced by 'phags-pa in any way. The principal contribution of 'phags-pa was to suggest the basic shapes of five of the letters. As the quote above shows, he explicitly repudiates the theory that Hangul was derived from 'phags-pa.

Since Ledyard doesn't actually believe what this page claims he does, and I don't know of anyone else who does, I will remove the references to Hangul from the page, unless there are further objections here.

-- Dominus 08:36, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I am about to change what the article says about Hangul. -- Dominus 19:51, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

His point is that the system does not derive from Phagspa, other than the alphabetic principle itself and a few letter derivations which are now obsolete. A very large conceptual debt is owed instead to Chinese. However, graphically the consonants are derived from Phagspa. The connection is more tenuous than most any other alphabet, and the script was a conscious invention, but the connection is there. kwami 10:24, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Turdetan script

2.1.6.1. Turdetan script (Spain) - c. III BC

c. 200 BC or c. 3 BC? --Brolny 06:02, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nepali

Is Nepali in the map particular script, or a synonym of Newari script? --Hatukanezumi 03:10, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Canadian syllabics

The page Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics does not say anything about Devangarian at all, so how is the Cree abugida related? The article says it's probably based on Pitman Shorthand. Legendsword 04:25, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

It's covered under the section "Origin". I plan to integrate that into the section "History". kwami 05:54, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Parthian abjad"

Just a heads up: "Parthian abjad" is the same thing as "Pahlavi abjad". "Pahlavi" is the native word for "Parthian". In case the motivation for treating them differently is based on omniglot,... forget omniglot. They're wrong. And "Pahlavi" wasn't used in NW China either, even if a Turfan manuscript might be thought of as being from NW China. -- Fullstop (talk) 15:09, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] sources

I like this article, and am happy to see it on Wikipedia. However, this article really needs to be footnoted, so that the average joe like me can tell whether the article is factual, or whether it instead just puts forward original research and editor speculation. Right now, there's no way to tell.

So, can some of the experts working on this article please add some footnotes referring to third-party sources? AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 14:12, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I think this whole article should be deleted since there are no sources and a lot of what it claims appears to be strictly theory. Also, the "parent system" for a lot of the alphabets have no sources and based on this theory of "everything comes from Egyptian hieroglyphs".

Alphaknave (talk) 18:51, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't know of any "theory" that "everything comes from Egyptian hieroglyphs". But, I'm afraid it's pretty well established beyond dispute that most everything does... including our own alphabet. It's been known for millennia that the Latin alphabet came from Greek; it's been known for millennia that the Greek alphabet came from Phoenician; there are millennia-old sources claiming that the Phoenician alphabet originated with hieroglyphs, and in recent times this idea has been pretty much confirmed by modern specialists and archaeologists, with the intermediate forms between hieroglyphs and Semitic letters actually being found in Sinai, Egypt and Canaan. Abundant sources can easily be found tracing the other known alphabets that came from the Phoenician alphabet and confirming this article; while I am not aware of any scholar seriously disputing these facts. I don't think you will be successful in getting consensus to delete this information from the encyclopedia. Do you have any specialist source contradicting this genealogy? Because I've never actually seen any! Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 20:20, 18 January 2008 (UTC)