It doesn't take long to learn a non-logographic script. Why not learn them all?
Now of course, there's no knowing how many obscure scripts there are in the world, so for this project it is necessary to make some exculsions:
- No conlangs: There is no limit to the number of conlangs out there, and many conlangs have at least one custom script (such as tengwar, sitelen pona, Ithkuil morphophonemic script..) so for this project to have a closed set of scripts I must exclude them.
- Only living languages: There are lots dead languages, many of which are obscure, and I think it would be impossible to learn the scripts for every dead language.
- No logographic scripts: A logographic script is too time consuming to learn. Since I am sticking to living languages, this only excludes Chinese characters. I plan to learn them in a few years when I seriously tackle the Sinosphere languages, but not now.
- No alternative scripts: There are many new scripts that have been proposed for spoken languages (such as Quickscript for English), but including such scripts would make it impossible to have a closed set, so I am sticking to widely adopted, conventional scripts.
I found an interesting list of the world's most popular scripts here. I have no idea how reputable the site is but it seems reasonably exhaustive and includes several scripts that I had never heard of. There are a couple of errors I noticed: 1) they say that the Javanese script is actively used by 80 million people, but as far as I know it has mostly been replaced by the Latin alphabet for Javanese speakers, 2) They list "Inuktitut" as a writing system, but it should more properly be called Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, as Inuktitut is just one of many indigenous Canadian languages that use it, and in fact it was originally designed for Cree, and 3) their Mongolian writing seems to be horizontal and I think it's supposed to be vertical? But other than that, the list seems fine, so I will use it as my to-do list for this project. But if you can think of another non-logographic script that is conventionally used for a living language, please let me know!
Rank | Name of script | Type | Population actively using (in millions) |
1 | Latin Latin | Alphabet | over 4900 |
2 | Chinese 汉字 漢字 | Logographic | 1340 |
3 | Arabic العربية | Abjad | 660+ |
4 | Devanagari देवनागरी | Abugida | 608+ |
5 | Bengali-Assamese বাংলা-অসমীয়া | Abugida | 300 |
6 | Cyrillic Кириллица | Alphabet | 250 |
7 | Kana かな カナ | Syllabary | 120 |
8 | Javanese | Abugida | 80 |
9 | Hangul 한글 조선글 | Alphabet, featural | 78.7 |
10 | Telugu తెలుగు | Abugida | 74 |
11 | Tamil தமிழ் | Abugida | 70 |
12 | Gujarati ગુજરાતી | Abugida | 48 |
13 | Kannada ಕನ್ನಡ | Abugida | 45 |
14 | Burmese မြန်မာ | Abugida | 39 |
15 | Malayalam മലയാളം | Abugida | 38 |
16 | Thai ไทย | Abugida | 38 |
17 | Sundanese | Abugida | 38 |
18 | Gurmukhi ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ | Abugida | 22 |
19 | Lao ລາວ | Abugida | 22 |
20 | Odia ଉତ୍କଳ | Abugida | 21 |
21 | Ge'ez ግዕዝ | Abugida | 18 |
22 | Sinhala සිංහල | Abugida | 14.4 |
23 | Hebrew אלפבית | Abjad | 14 |
24 | Armenian Հայոց | Alphabet | 12 |
25 | Khmer ខ្មែរ | Abugida | 11.4 |
26 | Greek Ελληνικό | Alphabet | 11 |
27 | Lontara | Abugida | 7.6 |
28 | Tibetan བོད་ | Abugida | 5 |
29 | Georgian ქართული | Alphabet | 4.5 |
30 | Modern Yi ꆈꌠ | Syllabary | 4 |
31 | Mongolian ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ | Alphabet | 2 |
32 | Tifinagh | Abjad | 1 |
33 | Syriac | Abjad | 0.4 |
34 | Thaana | Abugida | 0.35 |
35 | Inuktitut ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ | Abugida | 0.035 |
36 | Cherokee ᏣᎳᎩ | Syllabary | 0.02 |
Chinese is out of scope for this project so that leaves 35.
Now to list the scripts I already know. I would divide them into three categories:
- Native
- Quite comfortable (can sound out fairly quickly and doesn't need to be refreshed)
- Moderately comfortable (can sound out slowly and/or needs to be refreshed periodically or symbols will be forgotten)
Native:
- Latin
Quite Comfortable:
- Greek
- Cyrillic
- Hebrew
- Arabic
- Hiragana
Moderately comfortable:
- Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics: Pretty slow to sound out but doesn't need to be refreshed very often. I can only read Inuktitut syllabics, not any variety of Cree, Ojibwe, or any other language that might use this brilliant script.
- Katakana: Half of these symbols look exactly the same. I swear, I must have learned Katakana a dozen times and I always forget half of the symbols after a few months.
- Hangul: I remember the consonants pretty well, but I do have a tendency to forget the vowels.
- Devanagari: I can read it reasonably well, but there are a bunch of consonants that I keep having to look up.
My goal is to bring all 35 of the non-logographic scripts on the list to the "Moderately Comfortable" level (or maybe to a lower level, let's call it "Basic Familiarity"), so hopefully when I see any script that is in general use, I will be able to identify it on sight and make at least some attempt at sounding it out. Since 10 of the scripts are already known, that leaves me with 25 to learn. Of these, 17 are Brahmic scripts! So if I am going to embark on this project, it will be necessary to bring Devanagari from "Moderately Comfortable" to "Quite Comfortable" so that it can serve me as an "anchor" script. I've had half a mind to spend some time on Hindi anyway, so I don't have to twist my arm about it. I am a bit worried about all of the Brahmic scripts running together so hopefully that won't be too much of a problem.
I don't expect much trouble from the remaining 8 non-Brahmic unknown scripts, as they are mostly alphabets. I expect the biggest challenge to be the Cherokee Syllabary, not only due to the large number of symbols, but also due to the fact that Sequoyah used many symbols from the Latin alphabet but was not literate and designed the system from scratch, so the Latin symbols don't match up with their conventional values.
One bane of my existence is that I can never tell the difference between the Georgian and Armenian scripts. Hopefully that will soon be remedied.
Duolingo Hindi will probably be the biggest help in learning mastering the Devanagari script, but before I work on that I want to finish off the Duolingo Arabic course. I am just over 3/4 of the way through it at the moment and there are only 8 skills left that I haven't started, so hopefully it shouldn't be too much longer.
I am currently working on refreshing Hangul (watching some videos and also using Duolingo), and at the same time I am continuing to study Arabic using Duolingo and Assimil. I may take a break from Pimsleur Modern Standard Arabic and spend a little time on Pimsleur Hindi, but I plan to continue to work on Assimil Arabic for the duration of this challenge.
Known scripts: