Visible Speech (Terms)

Front 1

Akkadian

Back 1

- Darius (king of Persia) erected cuneiform inscriptions/languages of earlier rulers
- Semitic language
- Not related to Sumerian
- Written using cuneiform
- Mesopotamia

Front 2

Alveolar

Back 2

- putting front of tongue against either teeth or ridge behind teeth (alveolar ridge), aka dental

Front 3

Assyrian

Back 3

- cuneiform
- originally a minor Akkadian kingdom

Front 4

Babylonian

Back 4

- Cuneiform that could be partially deciphered by the mid 1850’s and fully deciphered by Rawlinson by 1857

Front 5

Bilabial

Back 5

- sound made using both lips

Front 6

Bulla(e)

Back 6

- clay envelope that contained Mesopotamian clay tokens
- trading system

Front 7

Calligraphy

Back 7

- "beautiful writing"
- synonymous with writing in China
- practiced in all cultures in all periods

Front 8

Clay token

Back 8

- Mesopotamia
- early accounting system
- distribution of these tokens in ancient Near East
- Tokens enclosed in clay envelope
- Number of tokens diminish after invention of writing

Front 9

Continuant

Back 9

- sound made when air does not stop, but continues

Front 10

Cuneiform

Back 10

- first form of writing developed in Mesopotamia
- character or characters formed by the arrangement of small wedge-shaped elements and used in ancient Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian writing.

Front 11

Dental

Back 11

- putting front of tongue against either teeth or ridge behind teeth (alveolar ridge), aka alveolar

Front 12

Determinative/classifier

Back 12

- used to indicate and show meaning in writing
- not pronounced
- indicates something about the preceding sounds (semantic class)

Front 13

Diacritic

Back 13

- mark added to a letter to indicate a pronunciation different from but related to the unmarked letter (accent marks)

Front 14

Digraphia

Back 14

- the ability to write a language in two ways
- ex. Chinese: Chinese & Pinyin

Front 15

Fricative

Back 15

- sound made when there is friction

Front 16

Great Seal script

Back 16

- first stage of stylization in Chinese script
- used in engraving of seals

Front 17

Hammurabi

Back 17

- Babylonian ruler that composed a law code written in cuneiform
- The 6th King of Babylon. Famous for writing the set of laws called “Hammurabi’s Code”-- the first set of recorded laws inscribed on stone tablets

Front 18

Hiragana

Back 18

- syllabary in Japanese
- part of kana
- phonetic writing

Front 19

Hittite

Back 19

- An Indo- European speaking society.
- The language borrowed the Sumero- Babylonian signs and syllabary.
- Written in hieroglyphics

Front 20

Homophony, -ous

Back 20

- the same pronunciation for words of different origins

Front 21

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

Back 21

- an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin Alphabet. devised as a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language.

Front 22

Kana

Back 22

- small set of supplmentary symbols, which are versions of simplified kanji; phonetic in nature
- 2 syllabaries: katakana, hiragana

Front 23

Kanji

Back 23

- Chinese signs used in Japanese writing
- 2000+ logograms

Front 24

Katakana

Back 24

- syllabary in Japanese
- part of kana
- phonetic writing

Front 25

Lingua franca

Back 25

- A language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different

Front 26

Logogram/-graph/-graphy

Back 26

- sign or character that denotes a word or part of speech
- ex. 1, 2, 3, +, -, @, &

Front 27

Mandarin

Back 27

- language spoken in mainland China
- written form of Chinese - in order to read Chinese, speakers of other dialects must learn Mandarin

Front 28

Manner of articulation

Back 28

- how the air stream is altered or obstructed (phonology)

Front 29

Mesopotamia

Back 29

- "land between the rivers" (Tigris & Euphrates)
- Sumer - later becomes Babylonia, now Iraq
- where writing was invented

Front 30

Mora

Back 30

- unit of phonological length
- represented by :

Front 31

Nasal

Back 31

- sound made when air flows through nasal passage

Front 32

Old Persian

Back 32

- one of the languages inscribed on the Rosetta stone

Front 33

Oracle-bone writing

Back 33

- short texts meant to foretell future in ancient China
- from Shang Dynasty
- divination texts

Front 34

Orthography

Back 34

- specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system (script) to write the language

Front 35

Palatalized consonant

Back 35

- consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate

Front 36

Phoneme

Back 36

- smallest phonetic unit in a language that is capable of conveying a distinction in meaning
- writing systems tend to represent phonemes rather than all the sounds in a language

Front 37

Phonogram/-graph/-graphy

Back 37

- symbol representing a vocal sound

Front 38

Phonology

Back 38

- study of the sound system of a language or the sound system of language in general
- writing systems must be able to represent sounds in a language

Front 39

Pictogram, pictography

Back 39

- logogram in which the object presented is identifiable
- ex. I ♥ you

Front 40

Pinyin

Back 40

- Chinese written in the Latin alphabet

Front 41

Place of articulation

Back 41

- where the air stream is altered or obstructed (phonology)

Front 42

Polyphony, -ous

Back 42

- simultaneously combining a number of parts, each forming an individual melody and harmonizing with each other

Front 43

Polysemy, polysemous

Back 43

- The coexistence of many possible meanings for a word or phrase

Front 44

Proto-cuneiform

Back 44

- "first" cuneiform

Front 45

Proto-writing

Back 45

- "pre-writing" - partial writing
- Ice Age cave art, Amerindian pictograms, mathematical symbols, etc.

Front 46

Qin Dynasty

Back 46

- 221-206 BCE
- unification of China
- standardization of writing

Front 47

Quipu

Back 47

- knotted arrangement of rope and cords that kept track of the movement of goods in the Inca empire (Incas did not have a writing system)

Front 48

Radical (in Chinese character)

Back 48

- semantic keys used to organize Chinese dictionaries.

Front 49

Rebus, rebus writing

Back 49

- using a picture to represent pronunciation rather than meaning
- all writing systems start with this

Front 50

Romaji

Back 50

- Roman alphabet used in Japanese writing

Front 51

Romanization

Back 51

- spread and change in the romance languages

Front 52

Schmandt-Besserat

Back 52

- scholar that felt that the exterior marks on bullae were a step towards the marking of clay tablets with more complex signs, and the consequent emergence of writing

Front 53

Script

Back 53

- outer, physical form of a writing system
- set of signs or characters and their shapes
- NOT language

Front 54

Seal

Back 54

- type of Chinese script used to engrave seals

Front 55

Semantic sign

Back 55

- relating to meaning or arising from distinctions between the meaning of different words or symbols

Front 56

Sexagesimal

Back 56

- A fraction based on sixtieths

Front 57

Shang Dynasty

Back 57

- first recorded dynasty in China that showed use of kanji and katana

Front 58

Simplified character

Back 58

- Mao Zedong tried to alphabatize Chinese and failed
- simplified Chinese is used in mainland China from 1950 on

Front 59

"Six scripts/principles of writing"

Back 59

- written by Xu Shen
- shows how Chinese writing works
- reason we can read oracle bone inscriptions
- Pictograms, simple representational, compound representational, rebus writing, semantic-phonetic compounds, semantic extension

Front 60

Stop, plosive

Back 60

- all air stopped then suddenly released (phonology)

Front 61

Stylus

Back 61

- what the cuneiform tablets were written with; they were usually made of reed, but occasionally made of metal or bone

Front 62

Sumer

Back 62

- An ancient region in southwestern Asia, in present-day Iraq, comprising the southern part of Mesopotamia

Front 63

Sumerian

Back 63

- began using words interchangeably from the start of their language (homophones); discovered how to write names with sounds (Swanson example)

Front 64

Syllabary

Back 64

- represents complex syllables, usually a consonant plus a vowel, but sometimes just a vowel; works well to represent and write Japanese; syllabary writes moras

Front 65

Syllabic

Back 65

- based on syllables; articulated in syllables

Front 66

Syllabogram

Back 66

- signs that represent syllables/types of syllables

Front 67

Tablet

Back 67

- shows maps; conveys messages

Front 68

Tallies

Back 68

- Mesopotamia
- early accounting system
- need for a more sophisticated accounting system probably led to the invention of writing

Front 69

Tone

Back 69

- the change is rhythm and highs and lows of speech- changes meaning in different languages

Front 70

Uruk

Back 70

most magnificent city in ancient Sumerian; setting of the biblical reference towards Nimrod; centralized authority, redistribution of goods (writing affiliation: trade was one of the reasons for the spread of writing), cuneiform used to organize the city

Front 71

Uruk IV period

Back 71

- Uruk in archaeological level V there are no tab- lets; in the subsequent Uruk IV, there are thousands of them: the system, with all or most of its basic components, may well have been invented by one person, or a small group, in Uruk, in a single day

Front 72

Velum, velar

Back 72

- sound made by pushing back of tongue against the back of the roof of the mouth

Front 73

Vocal tract

Back 73

- where sound is produced
- mouth, through nasal passage

Front 74

Voiced

Back 74

- Sound that causes the vocal cords to vibrate when made

Front 75

Voiceless

Back 75

- Sound that does not cause the vocal cords to vibrate when made

Front 76

Writing

Back 76

- a system of symbols that can be used to convey and and all speech/though
- dependent upon/secondary to speech
- technology that must be learned
- represents speech accurately enough that everyone who reads it interprets it the same way

Front 77

Writing system

Back 77

- set of orthographic conventions used to represent a language

Front 78

Xǔ Shèn

Back 78

- wrote "six scripts/writing principles" - info on how Chinese writing works
- reason we can read oracle bone inscriptions

Front 79

Zhou Dynasty

Back 79

- lasts 800 years, during "warring states" period
- writing occurs in each state, changing independently in each province

Front 80

Abecedery

Back 80

- inscription where the entire alphabet is written out

Front 81

Acrophonic principle

Back 81

- each sound is represented by a picture of an object whose name begins with that sound
- usually used when when a new writing system is invented
- have enough signs for the sounds of the language
- how the first alphabet functioned

Front 82

Akshara

Back 82

- same thing as a syllabic alphabet, alphasyllabary
- in alphabetics in which each character represents a consonant plus a default vowel
- vowel modifications indicate a consonant with a different vowel, usually with diacritics

Front 83

Alphasyllabary

Back 83

- syllabic alphabet
- can extract a basic consonant form from a set
- see akshara
- vowel modifications indicate a consonant with a different vowel (diacritics)

Front 84

Arabic

Back 84

- Semitic language
- descendant of Aramaic
- order of letters based on shape of characters
- began when Nabatean people (Arabs) wrote their names in Aramaic

Front 85

Aramaic

Back 85

- Semitic language
- descendant of Phoenician
- ancestor of Arabic, Hebrew, Brahmi
- official language of Persian Empire
- spread with trade routes

Front 86

Ashoka

Back 86

- king of Maurya from 299-237 BCE
- Brahmi probably invented during his reign
- pillar text in Brahmi script
- Brahmi script spreads all over east, leads to modern Indian scripts

Front 87

Boustrophedon

Back 87

- read lines in one direction then switch direction at the next line
- "like the plowing of the ox"
- how Phoenician was read

Front 88

Brahmi

Back 88

- descendant of Aramaic
- created during reign of Ashoka
- syllabic alphabet
- script spreads across east
- Devanagari derives from this

Front 89

Cartouche

Back 89

- an oval or oblong enclosing a group of Egyptian hieroglyphs, typically representing the name and title of a monarch

Front 90

Coptic

Back 90

- Egyptian writing not based on hieroglyphs
- uses Greek alphabet with 7 extra letters
- first time Egyptian language written with vowels
- spread with spread of Christianity (Coptic gospel)

Front 91

Cursive hieroglyphic

Back 91

- developed immediately once the Egyptians started writing
- faster form of writing
- Hieratic, Demotic was like a form of cursive

Front 92

Cyrillic

Back 92

- became the script for more than 60 languages; said to be invented by St. Cyril, but Cyril seems to have actually invented the Glagolithic alphabet, while this one was created later. It had 43 letters, which appear to have been derived from the Greek scripts of the time; today's ____ scripts usually have about 30 letters and is best known for its use as the Russian alphabet

Front 93

Cyrus

Back 93

- Persian King, Cyrus the Great (defeated Babylonians and takes over most of the known world); established several other languages in his empire to aid in efficient communication

Front 94

Demotic

Back 94

- form of Egyptian writing
- faster form of writing
- was like cursive
- meant "of the people"

Front 95

Devanagari

Back 95

- script that derives from Brahmi
- Sanskrit & Hindi written using this
- arranged in phonological grid
- script most associated with India

Front 96

Epigraphy, epigrapher

Back 96

- study of how characters develop over time

Front 97

Etruscan

Back 97

- borrowed Greek alphabet, passed it on to Latins
- language not related to any other language we know
- added letters to alphabet that Greek did not have
- alphabet became Latin/Roman alphabet

Front 98

Futhark

Back 98

- Runic script
- Name is first letters of Runic alphabet
- based on Latin alphabet
- used to write Germanic languages

Front 99

Hebrew

Back 99

- Semitic language, descendant of Aramaic
- Hebrew alphabet as we know it is a descendent of Aramaic (older one died out)

Front 100

Hieratic

Back 100

- cursive form of hieroglyphics
- usual way people wrote (documents, letters, etc)
- written on perishable material (papyrus - most hasn't survived)
- faster way of writing

Front 101

Hieroglyph(ic)

Back 101

- Egyptian writing system
- phonetic & logographic writing system
- what made the alphabet possible
- pictograms represent 25 consonants from spoken languages

Front 102

Hyksos

Back 102

- people that spoke a Semitic language
- went into Egypt through Sinai
- spread across Egypt, language spread with them
- one of earliest examples of alphabet

Front 103

Ligature

Back 103

- combination of 2 or more letters
- seen in Brahmi and other Indic languages
- used to represent combinations of consonants

Front 104

Linear Phoenician Alphabet

Back 104

- as this alphabet evolved from Proto-Sinaitic, the shapes of the letters became less curved

Front 105

Logoconsonantal

Back 105

- pictures standing only for the sound of their beginning consonant

Front 106

Maurya

Back 106

- kingdom in what is now India
- king Ashoka
- under this empire Brahmi alphabet was created

Front 107

Middle Iranian

Back 107

- Iranian languages written in Aramaic
- shows that Ashoka knew about Aramaic, since is it closely related to Brahmi

Front 108

Nabatean

Back 108

- Arab people living in Petra (modern Jordan)
- wrote their names using the Aramaic script around 0 (turn of century)
- eventually led to development of Arabic script

Front 109

Ogham

Back 109

- Irish script
- mostly used on tombstones
- Celtic languages
- 5th-7th centuries CE

Front 110

Old Canaanite Alphabet

Back 110

- common name for first alphabet
- ancestor of ancient Hebrew & Phoenician
- only wrote consonants
- acrophonic principle

Front 111

Orthographic depth

Back 111

- indicates the degree to which the alphabet deviates from simple one-to-one letter-phoneme correspondence

Front 112

Pandit

Back 112

- Sanskrit word for scholar; “comes into English as something less noble, pundit, somebody who likes to give opinions”
- a scholar, teacher particularly one skilled in Sanskrit language, mastered Vedic scriptures in the four Vedas, Hindu rituals and Hindu law, religion, music, or philosophy under a Guru in a Gurukul or tutored under the vedic ancient Guru Shishya tradition of learning

Front 113

Parthian

Back 113

- spoke a Persian-like language that used the Aramaic script

Front 114

Persian

Back 114

- Indo-European language
- written using Arabic script

Front 115

Phoenician

Back 115

- alphabet where all other alphabets come from
- Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic resulted from this alphabet
- 22 letters
- order of letters remains the same, for the most part, as it is borrowed

Front 116

Phonetic complement

Back 116

- a mark or a syllable that lets you know how to read the logogram

Front 117

Prakrit

Back 117

- any of the vernacular Indic languages of north and central India (as distinguished from Sanskrit) recorded from the 3rd century BC to the 4th century AD; the name for a group of Middle Indo-Aryan languages, derived from dialects of Old Indo-Aryan languages

Front 118

Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions

Back 118

- inscription from Sinai turquoise mines
- ca. 1500 BCE
- inscribed by people who spoke a Semitic language

Front 119

Runes

Back 119

- used to write Germanic languages
- based on Latin alphabet
- known as "futhark" after first 6 letters of alphabet
- 24 letters

Front 120

Sanskrit

Back 120

- Indo-European language
- written using Devanagari
- ancestor of many European languages

Front 121

Seleucids

Back 121

- took over after Alexander the Great died
- wrote in the Aramaic script

Front 122

Vowel letters

Back 122

- Aramaic begins to use 3 letters to represent some of the vowels
- Phoenician, the ancestor, did not write vowels
- symbol for y used to represent i, w for u, h for a

Front 123

Vowel points

Back 123

- marks added to letters to aid in pronunciation
- only used for sacred texts
- Arabic, Hebrew