From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Defective alphabet
Defective alphabet
A defective alphabet is an alphabet that does not repre- nant letters were ambiguous as well. The Arabic alphabet
sent all the phonemic distinctions of a language. It is dif- derives from the Aramaic, and not only did the Arama-
ferent from an irregular script, such as the English alpha- ic language have fewer phonemes than Arabic, but sev-
bet, which can distinguish all the phonemes of the lan- eral originally distinct Aramaic letters had conflated (be-
guage even if in practice it does not always do so. come indistinguishable in shape), so that in the early Ara-
For example, Italian has seven vowels, but the Italian bic writings 18 letters had to do duty for 28 consonant
alphabet has only five vowel letters to represent them; phonemes — and in the middle of words, only 15 were
in general, the differences between /e, ɛ/ and /o, ɔ/ are distinct. For example, medial represented /b, t, θ, n,
simply ignored. Among the consonants, both /s/ and /z/ j/, and ﺡrepresented /g, ħ, x/. A system of diacritic
are written , and both /ts/ and /dz/ are written , marks, or pointing, was later developed to resolve the am-
though not many words are distinguished by the latter. biguities, and over the centuries became nearly univer-
Stress is not reliably distinguished. sal. However, even today unpointed texts of a style called
Such imperfections are nothing new. The Greek al- mašq are found, where these consonants are not distin-
phabet has been defective for its entire history. Classical guished.
Greek had distinctive vowel length: five short vowels, /i Without short vowels or geminate consonants being
e a o u/, and seven long vowels, /iː eː ɛː aː ɔː oː uː/. When written, modern Arabic نظرnẓr could represent
the Phoenician alphabet was adapted to Greek, the names /naðˤara/ ’he saw’, /naðˤːara/ ’he compared’, /nuðˤira/
of five letters were pronounced with initial vowels by the ’he was seen’, /nuðˤːira/ ’he was compared’, /naðˤar/ ’a
Greeks and used acrophonically to represent vowels. Th- glance’, or /niðˤr/ ’similar’. However, in practice there is
ese were alpha, e (later called e psilon), iota, o (later called o little ambiguity, as the vowels are more easily predictable
micron, and u (later called u psilon): five letters for twelve in Arabic than they are in a language like English.[citation
vowel sounds. Later the [h] dropped from the Eastern needed] Moreover, the defective nature of the script has
Greek dialects, and the letter heta (now pronounced eta) its benefits: the stable shape of the root words, despite
became available; it was used for /ɛː/. About the same grammatical inflection, results in quicker word recog-
time the Greeks created an additional letter, omega, prob- nition and therefore faster reading speeds;[citation needed]
ably by writing omicron with an underline, that was used and the lack of short vowels, the sounds which vary the
for /ɔː/. Digraphs ei and ou were devised for /eː/ and /oː/. most between Arabic dialects, makes texts more widely
Thus Greek entered its classical era with seven letters accessible to a diverse audience.
and two digraphs for twelve vowel sounds. Long /iː aː uː/ However, in mašq and those styles of kufic writing
were never distinguished from short /i a u/, even though which lack consonant pointing, the ambiguities are more
the distinction was meaningful. Although the Greek al- serious, for here different roots are written the same. ?طر
phabet was a good match to the consonants of the lan- could represent the root nẓr ’see’ as above, but also nṭr
guage, it was defective when it came to the vowels. ’protect’, bṭr ’pride’, bẓr ’clitoris’ or ’with flint’, as well as
A famously defective alphabet is the Arabic one. The several inflections and derivations of each of these root
modern script does not normally write short vowels, but words.
for the first few centuries of the Islamic era, many conso-
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Categories:
• Orthography
• Alphabetic writing systems
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