Types of Written Language in Use Today

Among the over 6,800 estimated languages spoken in the world, about 2,500 of those languages are written languages. Writing systems are a written representation of language using graphic means to communicate the spoken idea or sound. There are several different types of written languages systems in use today. Three of the most common are the Latin alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet, and Han characters.

The Latin alphabet is also referred to as the Roman alphabet and is the most widely used writing system in the world. It was initially developed by ancient Romans for use in writing Latin. It incorporated many elements of the Greek alphabet. During the Middle Ages, the alphabet was adopted by most of the languages that descended directly from Latin, also know as the Romance languages. Many Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and even some Slavic languages adapted the Latin alphabet for use as well. Most European languages use the Roman alphabet to communicate. And of course, eventually the written English language adapted the Latin alphabet, replacing the Anglo-Saxon runic alphabet that was in use since ancient times.

The Cyrillic alphabet or Cyrillic script is the writing system used by most Slavic countries, including Russia, Bulgaria, Belarus, Serbia, Ukraine, and many others. In January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official alphabet of the European Union with the accession of Bulgaria into the Union. The alphabet is based on a mixture of Greek script and the older ancient Slavic Glagolitic alphabet. The traditional belief is that the alphabet was brought to the Slavs by Greek brothers and Christian missionaries, Cyril and Methodius. Over the centuries it adapted and changed and eventually became the Cyrillic script used today.

Han Characters or Chinese characters are different than both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets in that they are logo-syllabic. That means that each character symbol represents a single syllable word or a single-syllabic part of a word rather than the phonetic parts of a word. Written Chinese is considered one of the most ancient forms of written language. Some of these characters are used in Japanese and Korean as well. However, most Japanese and Korean characters differ quite a bit from Chinese characters. Japanese symbols are referred to as Kanji characters and Korean symbols are called Hanja.

These are only three examples of the thousands of written language systems used in the world today. Because they are the languages used by the three largest countries in the world, China, Russia, and the United States, these writing systems are the three most commonly used systems in the world.

Article Source: http://www.society-culture.freearticledirectories.com

MultiLing (www.multiling.com) is a multi-national company specializing in business translation services, document translation services, and translator software. Art Gib is a freelance writer.

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