Defective script: Difference between revisions

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==Ancient examples of defective script==

Such shortcomings are not uncommon. The [[Greek alphabet]] was defective during its early history. [[Ancient Greek language|Ancient Greek]] had distinctive [[vowel length]]: five short vowels, {{IPA|/i e a o u/}}, and seven long vowels, {{IPA|/iː eː ɛː aː ɔː oː uː/}}. When the [[Phoenician alphabet]] was adapted to Greek, the names of five letters were pronounced by the Greeks with initial consonants made silent, and were then used [[acrophony|acrophonically]] to represent vowels. These were ''[[alpha (letter)|alpha]]'', ''e'' (later called ''[[epsilon|e psilon]]''), ''[[iota (letter)|iota]]'', ''o'' (later called ''[[omicron (letter)|o micron]]''), and ''u'' (later called ''[[upsilon (letter)|u psilon]]'') &ndash; <{{lang|grc|α, ε, ι, ο, υ}}> &ndash; five letters for twelve vowel sounds. (The lost initial consonants were {{IPA|/ʔ, h, j, ʕ, w/}}.) Later the [h] (from {{IPA|/ħ/}}) dropped out from the Eastern Greek dialects, and the letter ''heta'' (now pronounced ''[[eta (letter)|eta]]'') became available; it was used for {{IPA|/ɛː/}}. About the same time, the Greeks created an additional letter, ''[[omega (letter)|o mega]]'', probably by writing ''o micron'' with an underline, that was used for {{IPA|/ɔː/}}. [[Digraph (orthography)|Digraph]]s <{{lang|grc|ει}}> and <{{lang|grc|ου}}>, no longer pronounced as [[Diphthong|diphthongs]] {{IPA|/ej/}} and {{IPA|/ow/}}, were adopted for {{IPA|/eː/}} and {{IPA|/oː/.}} Thus, Greek entered its classical era with seven letters and two digraphs &ndash; <{{lang|grc|α, ε, ι, ο, υ, η, ω, ει, ου}}> &ndash; for twelve vowel sounds. Long {{IPA|/iː aː uː/}} were never distinguished from short {{IPA|/i a u/}}, even though the distinction was meaningful. Although the Greek alphabet was a good match to the consonants of the language, it was defective when it came to some vowels.<ref>{{cite book|author=Pierre Swiggers|editor=P.T. Daniels & W. Bright|title=The World's Writing Systems|year=1996|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-507993-7|chapter=Transmission of the Phoenician Script to the West|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780195079937}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Leslie Threatte|editor=P.T. Daniels & W. Bright|title=The World's Writing Systems|year=1996|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-507993-7|chapter=The Greek Alphabet|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780195079937}}</ref>

Other ancient scripts were also defective. Egyptian [[hieroglyphs]] had no vowel representation at all, while the [[cuneiform script]] frequently did not distinguish among a consonant triad like /t/, /d/ and /t'/ (emphatic /t/), or between the vowels /e/ and /i/.