Talk:Old Turkic script

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Why are Mongolian and Arabic script discussions on this page? There are articles about both already. Evertype 10:39, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

Most likely relicts from a rename or merge. E.g. an article Old turkic alphabets was merged into this page. So it's somewhat like an article "scripts used by turkic people before using latin script". Strange mix. Either the lemma or the content has to change. --Pjacobi 10:48, July 25, 2005 (UTC)
I removed it once, only to have it restored. So perhaps we need a discussion about what is appropriate for this article. kwami 17:35, 2005 July 25 (UTC)
THis article is about the Orkhon script, not about the Arabic script or the Mongolian script, and not about Turkic writing systems in general. Evertype 17:53, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Kul Tigin monument image

Another image that might pertain to this article is this one, which says it's an image of the Kul Tigin monument that has the Orkhon script in it. I can't figure out where in the article it should go, though. Image:Kultigin_monument.jpg --76.200.138.185 20:47, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tone of Article and Sources

This article keeps going from being flippant in tone to glorifying. Perhaps a balance could be found. It would also be useful to start stating sources in the talk page. --Son of the Tundra 09:25, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Orkhon Script and Runic Script

The historical connection between The Orkhon Script and Runic Script is not known. The similarity is quite clearly there and cannot be dismissed simply by saying that both were cast in stone. Cuneiform was also cast in stone and bears no similarity to Runes. --Son of the Tundra 09:29, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Cuneiform was not cast in stone, it was pressed into clay with a stylus. Runiform scripts were not cast in stone either, they were carved. The Latin and Greek alphabets were runiform when carved in stone too: that's an artifact of the method of inscription. Runes are related to the Latin script, and Orkhon to the Sogdian, as far as we now know. The article mentioned that some letters were similar, but the claims were spurious. It gave the letter M as an example, but the letter M in Orkhon looks like a fish and nothing at all like runic M. So unless there is some source demonstrating similarities, yes we can dismiss it. kwami 18:20, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Why have you removed the see also section? Anyone researching this topic may also be interested in looking at those sections as well. Also, if you look at Old Hungarian script and runic alphabet, you will see that Orkhon and Old Hungarian are referred to as being related; and they are referred to as runiform. Why have you removed the link to http://www.turkicworld.org ? That site contains a huge amount of information on this subject and is a great place to research. --Son of the Tundra 10:05, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry! That must have been an editing error when I added my ref. I have a sticky 'shift' key, and sometimes select a block of text when I only mean to insert the cursor. Maybe I was looking at the hard copy and didn't notice the highlighting on my screen. kwami 18:18, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi Kwami, I'd be grateful if you could take a look at this article http://www.antalya-ws.com/futhark/index.htm and tell me what you think. It attempts to prove a connection between old Runic and Orkhon. I would certainly be very interested in reading your analysis of that paper and then perhaps discuss it with you. --Son of the Tundra 08:46, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, not impressed. They take letters in Futhark and Orkhon that look superficially similar, then convert samples of written Norse into the alleged Orkhon equivalent, and see if they can make any sense of it in Turkic. That's like taking this sentence, matching the letters to their closest graphic equivalents in katakana, and trying to make sense out of it in Japanese, then claiming that proves English and Japanese share a common ancestry! There are hundreds if not thousands of crackpot decypherments like this out there. (The last debate I got in was the claim that the Micmac Indians wrote in Egyptian hieroglyphs; there were just such superficial similarities as we have here, and I ended up being called a racist because denying the connection meant I was denying the Micmac their civilization. A couple years ago in Togo I heard a lecture by someone claiming that the hieroglyphs could be read in Ewe, which proved that Togolese built the pyramids. Never mind the fact that the Ewe language didn't exist yet!)
The single biggest fallacy is assuming that letters must be related just because they look similar, even though you ignore their sound values. If you take handwriting variants over several centuries, you can make any script you want look like any other script. What would convince me is if you took an early Futhark k and early Orkhon k and they looked similar, then t from both and they looked similar, etc. Or else structural irregularities. (For example, both Greek and Armenian write the vowel /u/ with the letters <oy>. Just that detail indicates that there was likely some connection between the Greek and Armenian alphabets, though it doesn't prove one actually derives directly from the other.) I would consider anything else to be an "extraordinary" claim, and like Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Going by Occam's Razor, I expect that your author is seeing animals in the clouds, and believes they're real. kwami 09:22, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Kwami, You provide some very amusing anecdotes. I do see your point though. It does seem a bit silly to try and take this sentence, as you say, and match the letters to their closest graphic equivalents in some other script, and then try to make sense out of it. Just curious though, can’t one script be derived from another without taking the sounds, i.e. just taking the shapes? On another note, the article Old Hungarian script says that it is derived from Orkhon. Does that mean that the sounds and the shapes were taken from Orkhon? Does that also apply to other scripts, for example if one can read Arabic would that mean that one would also be able to read (but not necessarily understand) other languages that use the Arabic script?--Son of the Tundra 10:09, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, there are scripts like you describe. Take a look at the Cherokee alphabet, where an illiterate man used the Latin alphabet without understanding how it worked. For example, letters that look very much like 'CWY' are pronounced tsalagi ("Cherokee"). However, not only are the sounds different, but so is the structure of the script: it's a syllabary rather than an alphabet, because Sequoyah didn't understand the alphabetic principle. When illiterate people come up with their own writing systems, they're almost always syllabaries. And when they're literate, they almost always follow the values and structure of the model script. This has been the case for hundreds and hundreds of scripts. After all, they've learned that it is the correct way to write, and they don't want to be ignorant! When the sound values change, it's usually because of differences in the languages. Greek, for example, didn't have an /h/ or glottal stop, so when the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, they used the /h/ and glottal stop for the vowels A and E. But when the two languages had sounds in common, like /k, l, r, m, s/, the letters kept their sound values.
Unlike Runic, Orkhon is consonant-based, and tends to drop out vowels, so that sabımın "my word" was spelled <sbmn>, and ešid "listen" as <sid>, missing an entire syllable! (Vowels do tend to be written in final syllables.) This is similar to the Aramaic-derived scripts of SW Asia, but not very much like Runic. It implies that either Orkhon was a gradual development out of the Aramaic family, or else that whoever invented it was literate in one of those scripts, such as Sogdian. Likewise, Runic clearly comes from the Latin family. So a connection between them is improbable, and would require some good evidence to be convincing.
You're right, though, a script could be borrowed without paying any attention to sound values, like Cherokee. The question is, how would you ever prove it? In the case of Cherokee, Sequoyah immitated the little details of the Latin letters, such as the serifs and little bulbs at the ends of the lines, plus we have historical records, and we know that he invented his script in a sea of Latin-alphabet literacy. However, the little serifs etc. could have been a cultural influence after the script was invented. If Cherokee and Latin were only preserved in crudely written notes, from different continents and written centuries apart, it would be very difficult to show that they were related, or to decide whether Cherokee came from Latin, Cyrillic, or Hebrew, or from the Japanese kana syllabary.
As for Hungarian runes, we can't prove they're related to Orkhon. But a relationship looks promising: the Hungarians had strong Turkic cultural influence, so the opportunity was there, and they likely would have looked to the Turks for their ideas rather than, say, the Germans or Slavs. Also, many of the letters with similar sound values also looked similar, although there is so much variation that it's a bit of a guessing game. For example, one form of /s/ looked like an I in both scripts, /n/ like a reversed C, /i/ like a Γ, /d/ like an x or a +, etc. There's about as good a connection between Old Hungarian and Orkhon as there is between Orkhon and Sogdian - not a great match, but good enough to make a reasonable hypothesis. kwami 22:37, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

You might look at my article "The Mystery of the Szekely Runes: Provenence of a script" in the Occasional Papers of the Epigraphic Society, Vol. 19, p. 184-? if you can get your hands on it at your library. It summarizes the state of knowledge on the development of the Szekely/Hungarian "runes" at the time I wrote the article. Doc Rock 11:46, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


I found an interesting links through "Omniglot": http://www.antalya-ws.com/futhark/FUTHP3E.HTM and http://www.antalya-ws.com/futhark/FUTHP4E.HTM

It is about relationship between turkic runes and oldest found runestones found in Sweden. I think that it's obvious enough that basis for Futhark alphabet was taken from Orkhon runes. This can be explained as cultural influence of turkic civilization during turkic migration circa 300-400 AD. Example of Cherokee alphabet shown by Kwami is good, but we must remember that the fact that norse and turkic symbols have different pronounciation DOES NOT mean that this two alphabets are completely unrelated. Another example is the script of now extinct Khitan (or Liao in chinese) people. Script for Khitan language is obviously derived from chinese Hanzi. It has same symbols. Now what we see? Some of the symbols really have same meaning as in Chinese ieroglyphs but some of the symbols changed their meaning, "mountain", for example, became "gold", "north" became "time", ieroglyph that could've mean "package" in chinese became number "3". Not to mention that this languages(chinese, khitan) were from absolutely different language families. Same thing is about Jurchen script that is also related to chinese. Let's take Chinese numerical symbol of 10.000, chinese pronounciation will be MAN,BAN, maybe WAN, in Jurchen it will be TUMAN, it is clear that word TUMAN has altaic origin since it is used in modern russian language and means "fog". Another example is the word dragon, in Jurchen it sounds as MUDUR, in written Jurchen it's actually 2 another chinese characters that have no relation to the chinese symbol for Dragon. The word Panther will sound as YARHA, while in Japanese pronounciation it will sound as HYOU or HOU (chinese-influenced).

I just want to say that no one have right to say that Norse and Turkic runes are unrelated or same before deep study of this subject. Many so called "historians" always try to deny clear facts, simply because they can't admit that fundamental doctrines of their views on history can be exposed and considered to be false. We must look at facts as they are and stop making theories and look sober on the things.


[edit] Z

Am I only one who finds that orkhon letter "Z" resembles roman & greek letter 'Z'? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.200.186.130 (talk) 11:35, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sogdian

This alphabet is not a form of Sogdian alphabet. Here some letters and their origins:

→ B came from Balık (Fish in Turkish)
→ Y came from Yay (Bow in Turkish)
→ Oq or Ok came from Ok (Arrow in Turkish)
→ Ök came from Ök (Ram in old Turkish) but that letter is vertical version, horizontal version can be found other scripts —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.145.110.194 (talk • contribs)

80.145.110.194, sorry, I do not have good sources to list the autochtonous origin of the Turkic Alphabets, and therefore I included only 4 theories of origin. Your example shows that the 5th theory, advocated by some prominent Türkologists, including, I think, Scherbak, also belongs to the description of theories of origin. Barefact 07:10, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] import from Turkic alphabets

Redirecting and merging to willfully delete contents, including the outline of the origin, crotique of the initial ideas, and the rest, is wrong. Turkic alphabets include the Orkhon as its component, and there is no chance for a component to describe the whole. The article has to be restored and any objections discussed. Discussion on the Orkhon article would be outside of the scope of the article. Barefact 06:59, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

You will note that I moved your material to Orkhon script, into the "origins" and "variants" section. If you are unhappy with the title "Orkhon script", we can discuss a move, at Talk:Orkhon script. I agree it could also reside at Orkhon-Yenisey script, for example. dab (𒁳) 09:42, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I noted that. I also appreciated your addition of Amajolov article. I presume you did not create it to spill negatives on him, which are a separate issue. For the Turkic alphabets, I.Kyslasov is the main source, his palegraphy allowed a clear division of the raw mass of Turkic epigraphy into distinctly defined groups of alphabets. If Amajolov deserves an article, I.Kyslasov deserves nothing less. I will be glad to provide any help for it.
In light of I.Kyslasov classifications, universally cited (for such an obscure subject his book has exceptional visibility), the whole architecture devoted to the Turkic alphabets needs to be re-thought. Granted, the Orkhon script is most famous, and needs a special page. Turkic Euroasian and Turkic Asian subfamilies, which include a number of alphabets each, seem to merit a separate page each, even though they overlap geographically. This overlapping has historical roots, history can justify combining them in a single article. And finally, the overview of all families with the origin and spread of each sub-family was and is what I started under "Turkic alphabets", so unfortunately and untimely interrupted by your intervention. Taxonomically, these three layers present different perspectives, and they surely can't fit in the Orkhon script straightjacket. You can't write a good article starting with a relatively minor detail (even a famous minor detail) and ascending to the overall picture. Barefact 19:51, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
I could accept a move to Old Turkic script if you insist. In any case, this is the article that discusses all variants of the script. If we're moving this, you might then consider starting a separate article on the Orkhon inscriptions in particular. dab (𒁳) 13:14, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
I would favour a move to Old Turkic script. -- Evertype·✆ 21:09, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is Y /j/ or /ʤ/?

NY is for sure /nʤ/, not /nj/! Look at russian version 24.218.13.86 (talk) 02:54, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Common letter?

The -NG [ŋ] letter looks very similar to elder futhark [n] (Nauþiz) rune. The only difference is that futhark version pierces through vertical line. Could it be a connection? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.200.186.108 (talk) 07:15, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Letter similarities chart

I made a little chart analyzing Elder Futhark and Talas-Orkhon-Yenisei script. Regards, Iliassh (talk)