Defective script: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 06:40, 4 November 2023

Revision as of 02:51, 10 November 2023

Line 1:

A '''defective script''' is a [[writing system]] that does not represent all the [[phoneme|phonemic]] distinctions of a language.<ref name="Sampson">{{cite book|last=Sampson|first=Geoffrey|year=1985|title=Writing Systems|url=https://archive.org/details/writingsystems00geof|url-access=registration|publisher=Stanford University Press|isbn=978-0-8047-1756-4}}</ref>{{rp|36-38}}<ref>{{cite book|last=Coulmas|first=Florian|year=1996|title=The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems|publisher=Blackwell|isbn=978-0-631-21481-6}}</ref>{{rp|118}} This means that the concept is always relative to a given language. Taking the [[Latin alphabet]] used in [[Italian orthography]] as an example, the [[Italian language]] has seven [[vowel]]s, but the alphabet has only five vowel [[letter (alphabet)|letter]]s to represent them; in general, the difference between the phonemes [[Vowel#heightHeight|close]] {{IPA|/e, o/}} and [[Vowel#heightHeight|open]] {{IPA|/ɛ, ɔ/}} is simply ignored, though stress marks, if used, may distinguish them. Among the Italian [[consonant]]s, both {{IPA|/s/}} and {{IPA|/z/}} are written {{angbr|{{lang|it|s}}}}, and both {{IPA|/t͡s/}} and {{IPA|/d͡z/}} are written {{angbr|{{lang|it|z}}}}; [[Stress (linguistics)|stress]] and [[hiatus (linguistics)|hiatus]] are also not reliably distinguished.<ref>{{cite book|last=Danesi|first=Marcel|year=1996|title=Italian the Easy way|publisher=Barron's Educational Series|url=https://archive.org/details/italianeasyway00dane_0|url-access=registration|isbn=9780812091465}}</ref>

==Ancient examples of defective script==