Sogdian alphabet

All you want to know about Sogdian alphabet

Sogdian
Type	Abjad
Spoken languages	Sogdian
Time period	Late Antiquity
Parent systems	Phoenician → Aramaic → Syriac → Sogdian
Child systems	Mongolian Orkhon script Manichaean script Old Uyghur alphabet
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The Sogdian alphabet was originally used for the Sogdian language, which belongs to the Iranian family. It is derived from Syriac, the descendant script of the Aramaic alphabet.

History of the alphabet

Middle Bronze Age 19 c. BCE Ugaritic 15 c. BCE Proto-Canaanite 15 c. BCE Phoenician 12 c. BCE Paleo-Hebrew 10 c. BCE Samaritan 6 c. BCE Aramaic 8 c. BCE Kharoṣṭhī 6 c. BCE Brāhmī & Indic 6 c. BCE (see Brahmic abugidas below) Hebrew 3 c. BCE Pahlavi 3 c. BCE Avestan 4 c. CE Palmyrene 2 c. BCE Syriac 2 c. BCE Sogdian 2 c. BCE Orkhon (Old Turkic) 6 c. CE Old Hungarian ca. 650 Old Uyghur Mongolian 1204 Nabataean 2 c. BCE Arabic 4 c. CE Mandaic 2 c. CE Georgian (disputed) ca. 430 CE Greek 8 c. BCE Etruscan 8 c. BCE Latin 7 c. BCE Runic 2 c. CE Coptic 3 c. CE Gothic 3 c. CE Armenian 405 Glagolitic 862 Cyrillic ca. 940 Paleohispanic 7 c. BCE Epigraphic South Arabian 9 c. BCE Ge’ez 5–6 c. BCE

Meroitic 3 c. BCE

Ogham 4 c. CE

Hangul 1443

Zhuyin (Bopomofo) 1913

Brahmic-derived abugidas

Northern Brāhmīc Gupta 5 c. BCE Mithilakshar 203 CE Siddhaṃ ca. 600 Tibetan ca. 650 ’Phagspa 1269 Lepcha 1700 Limbu 1740 Nāgarī ca. 750 Eastern Nāgarī Bengali ca. 1050 Assamese ca. 1050 Oriya ca. 1100 Devanāgarī ca. 1200 Ranjana ca. 1100 Newari ca. 1150 Moḍī ca. 1600 Gujarati ca. 1600 Cree 1841 Carrier 1885 Inuktitut 1870 Blackfoot 19 c. Sayisi Śāradā 770 Laṇḍā 10 c. Old Kashmiri Gurmukhī 1539 Takri Bhujimol (Old Nepal) 10 c. Ranjana 12 c. Soyombo 17 c. Prachalit Nepal

Southern Brāhmīc Tamil-Brahmi 5 c. BCE Vatteluttu 4 c. BCE Pallava 6 c. CE Grantha 6 c. Sinhala 7 c. Tamil 8 c. CE Saurashtra 20 c. Malayalam 12 c. Tulu 15 c. Old Kawi 775 Balinese Javanese 9 c. Mon 9 c. Burmese 1050 Khmer 9 c. Thai 1283 Lao ca. 1350 Kadamba 5 c. Old Kannada 9 c. Kannada 16 c. Bhattiprolu Script ca. 400 BCE Telugu 16 c. Kalinga 6 c. CE

Complete genealogy

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Many Buddhist, Manichaean, Nestorian, and Zoroastrian texts as well as all secular material such as letters, legal documents, coin legends, and inscriptions were written in this script.

Although Soghdian is an Eastern Iranian language it has many Turkic child systems such as Old Uyghur and other eastern Turkic languages. When used for the Sogdian language, this alphabet was usually written in horizontal lines from right to left. When this adopted for Uyghur which was not Iranian language, it was normally in vertical direction from top to bottom, but with the first vertical line starting from the left side, not from the right as in Chinese, most probably because the right-to-left direction was used in horizontal writing. The Mongolian alphabet proper, being an adaptation of the Old Uyghur alphabet, still uses this kind of vertical writing, as does its remoter descendant Manchu^{[citation needed]}.

1 See also
2 References
3 Works cited
4 External links

References

Works cited

F.W. Mote (1999). Imperial China, 900-1800. Harvard University Press, 42-43. ISBN 0674012127.

External links

Sample of the Sogdian language and script

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