Editors
3,881
edits
Difference between revisions of "Women's script"
m
→History
(Changed to table layout, but I don't know how to centre the text) |
m (→History) |
||
| (9 intermediate revisions by 8 users not shown) | |||
|
|books=[[The Stormlight Archive]]
}}
The '''women's script''' is an alphabetic writing system used in [[Vorin]] nations, such as [[Alethkar]], [[Jah Keved]], and [[Kharbranth]], on [[Roshar]]. The script is a phonetic alphabet, meaning each symbol, or "grapheme", denotes a particular sound, or "phoneme", and is written left to right starting in the top left hand corner of a page.{{book ref|sa1|28}} Each letter is determined by shape and size, and can be modified by the presence of one or two small lines after it. As is indicated by the name, it is almost exclusively used by women, as writing is considered a feminine pursuit. The women's script is distinctly different from [[glyphs]], which are a more logographic writing system (albeit with a phonetic component), which men are also allowed to learn.
== History ==
Women's script is known to date back to at least 1800 years before the True Desolation, as the protoscript. The protoscript was an old form of Women's script which eventually took on the modern form.{{book ref|sa2|77}} This script took shape before various sound changes, and thus preserved historical place of articulation.{{wob ref|11464}}
== Structure ==
=== Punctuation ===
Women's script has only one known character for punctuation. It is a single vertical line with two small, horizontal lines at the top and bottom. It is written at the beginning of a sentence and it defines the maximum character height. Questions are marked by adding “ha” at the end of the last word in the sentence. There is also a question mark present in Navani's sketch in ''Oathbringer'' on page 447, but judging by the handwriting this was added later by [[Nazh]] and is not part of the women's script. There is also a diacritic mark denoting if a letter in an otherwise symmetrical word is pronounced “h,” but it is currently unknown what this looks like,{{book ref|WoR|47}} only that it is present both above and below the letter. It is unknown what other punctuation exists, if any, as no other examples have been observed.
=== Women's Script Characters===
{| class="infobox" width=100%
|-
! Set !! Starting Punctuation !! First !! Second !! Third !! Fourth !!
|-
| rowspan=2 | Vowel set || [[File:Women's script ruler.svg|
|- style="text-align:center;"
| Height Marker || '''E''' || '''A''' || '''O''' || '''U or W''' || '''I'''
|-
| rowspan=2 | T set || [[File:Women's script ruler.svg|
|- style="text-align:center;"
| Height Marker || '''T''' || '''D''' || '''R''' || '''Th''' || '''L'''
|-
| rowspan=2 | S set || [[File:Women's script ruler.svg|
|- style="text-align:center;"
| Height Marker || '''S''' || '''Z''' || '''N''' || '''Sh''' || '''H'''
|-
| rowspan=2 | P set || [[File:Women's script ruler.svg|
|- style="text-align:center;"
| Height Marker || '''P''' || '''B''' || '''M''' || '''Ph''' || '''V'''
|-
| rowspan=2 | K set || [[File:Women's script ruler.svg|
|- style="text-align:center;"
| Height Marker || '''K''' || '''G''' || '''Y''' || '''Ch''' || '''J'''
|}
== Examples of women's script ==
| |||