JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images
The surge of generative AI can harness tremendous potential for the engineering realm. It can also come with its challenges, as enterprises and engineers alike figure out the impact of AI on their roles, business strategies, data, solutions, and product development. What does the future roadmap look like for bringing generative AI into the software fold? ZDNET decodes from all angles….Continue reading….
By: David Gewirtz
Source: ZDNET
.
Critics:
The major writing systems broadly fall into four categories: logographic, syllabic, alphabetic, and featural. As pictograms do not represent a language’s sounds, they have been argued not to constitute a writing system. Comparative evolution from pictograms to abstract shapes, in Mesopotamian cuneiforms, Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters.
A logography (also called a logosyllabary) is written using logograms—written characters which represent individual words, morphemes or certain syllables. For example, in Mayan, the glyph for “fin”, pronounced ka, was also used to represent the syllable ka whenever the pronunciation of a logogram needed to be indicated. Many logograms have an ideographic component (Chinese “radicals”, hieroglyphic “determiners”).
In Chinese, about 90% of characters are compounds of a semantic (meaning) element called a radical with an existing character to indicate the pronunciation, called a phonetic. However, such phonetic elements complement the logographic elements, rather than vice versa.
The main logographic system in use today is Chinese characters, used with some modification for the various languages or dialects of China, Japan, and sometimes in Korean, although in South and North Korea, the phonetic Hangul system is mainly used. Older logographic systems include cuneiform, and Mayan.
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, typically a consonant followed by a vowel, or just a vowel alone. In some scripts more complex syllables (such as consonant-vowel-consonant, or consonant-consonant-vowel) may have dedicated glyphs. Phonetically similar syllables are not written similarly. For instance, the syllable “ka” may look nothing like the syllable “ki”, nor will syllables with the same vowels be similar.
Syllabaries are best suited to languages with a relatively simple syllable structure, such as Japanese. Other languages that use syllabic writing include the Linear B script for Mycenaean Greek; Cherokee, Ndjuka, an English-based creole language of Suriname; and the Vai script of Liberia.
An alphabet is a set of written symbols that represent consonants and vowels. In a perfectly phonological alphabet, the letters would correspond perfectly to the language’s phonemes. Thus, a writer could predict the spelling of a word given its pronunciation, and a speaker could predict the pronunciation of a word given its spelling.
However, as languages often evolve independently of their writing systems, and writing systems have been borrowed for languages they were not designed for, the degree to which letters of an alphabet correspond to phonemes of a language varies greatly from one language to another and even within a single language.[citation needed]
Sometimes the term “alphabet” is restricted to systems with separate letters for consonants and vowels, such as the Latin alphabet, although abugidas and abjads may also be accepted as alphabets. Because of this use, Greek is often considered to be the first alphabet.In most of the alphabets of the Middle East, it is usually only the consonants of a word that are written, although vowels may be indicated by the addition of various diacritical marks.
Writing systems based primarily on writing just consonants phonemes date back to the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt. Such systems are called abjads, derived from the Arabic word for “alphabet”, or consonantaries. In most of the alphabets of India and Southeast Asia, vowels are indicated through diacritics or modification of the shape of the consonant. These are called abugidas. Some abugidas, such as Ethiopic and Cree, are learned by children as syllabaries, and so are often called “syllabics”.
However, unlike true syllabaries, there is not an independent glyph for each syllable. A featural script represents the features of the phonemes of the language in consistent ways. An example of such a system is Korean hangul. For instance, all labial sounds (pronounced with the lips) may have some element in common. In the Latin alphabet, this is accidentally the case with the letters “b” and “p”; however, labial “m” is completely dissimilar, and the similar-looking “q” and “d” are not labial.
In Korean hangul, however, all four labial consonants are based on the same basic element, but in practice, Korean is learned by children as an ordinary alphabet, and the featural elements tend to pass unnoticed. Another featural script is SignWriting, the most popular writing system for many sign languages, where the shapes and movements of the hands and face are represented iconically. Featural scripts are also common in fictional or invented systems, such as J.R.R. Tolkien‘s Tengwar.
Multiple programs are in place to aid both children and adults in improving their literacy skills. For example, the emergence of the writing center and community-wide literacy councils aim to help students and community members sharpen their writing skills. These resources, and many more, span across different age groups in order to offer each individual a better understanding of their language and how to express themselves via writing in order to perhaps improve their socioeconomic status.
As William J. Farrell puts it: “Did you ever notice that, when people become serious about communication, they want it in writing? Other parts of the world have seen an increase in writing abilities as a result of programs such as the World Literacy Foundation and International Literacy Foundation, as well as a general push for increased global communication.
Scary-good Writing Tips: Learn How to Write a Listicle
Writing On The Fly: Fly Fishing 101: UNH Club Gets Some Tips From The Pros
Top 10 tips for writing a great Legal CV
Five Tips for Writing a Letter of Recommendation
Top 5 Personal Statement Writing Tips
Recording of our Top Tips on Writing Winning Awards Entries
Narratively’s 6 Tips for Writing a Revealing and Impactful Memoir Story
How to Get Better at Grant Writing for Your Nonprofit’s Technology Project: 4 Tips
SEO Writing: 13 Tips on Writing Blog Posts That Rank on Google
Here are 10 tips on choosing the best words in writing
Leave a Reply