This is literally what I did to make notes for my midterm this semester on writing systems. In case you were wondering, here are what all the random terms on there mean:
Gunu: Slash marks added to a pictogram in order to make it mean something different than the pictogram without the slashes. In this case, I put slashes under a pictogram I made for "ball" in order to specify that it's a baseball. I also put one on a foot to indicate that it meant "toe", and that a picture of a foot without the gunu would mean "foot". This term comes from the ancient and headache-inducing Sumerian cuneiform.
Transliteration: When you use a writing system to write a word (or words) that comes from a language that uses a different writing system. So, like using this alphabet of ours to write Chinese words.
Transcription: When you write a word (or words) using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which is a fancy-schmancy thing that linguists use to record the actual sounds of languages, without things like weird spelling conventions or non-phonetic writing systems getting in the way. My example for myself was with the word "baseball": /bejsbal/.
On-reading: When a writing system is borrowed by a language that didn't usually use it, there are two different options for reading it. On-reading is when you pretend that the symbols refer to the sounds or meaning of the original language (phonetic on-reading is specifically about the sounds). My example involved pretending that my little pictures were made for English and then French-speakers borrowed them. "Manteau" (pronounced like "man-toe", but with a French accent) means "coat". This term comes from Japanese, because this sometimes happens with the Chinese characters that were borrowed for use in writing Japanese.
Kun-reading: This is the other option for reading a borrowed script, and it involves reading the symbol(s) as if they referred to the new language's meanings or sounds (phonetic kun-reading specifies sounds). In my example, the French word "homme" means "man", and "pomme" means "apple". The reason it works to just add a "p" to "homme" is because the "h" is silent. :)
Pictogram: A picture used in a writing system. My example was a bat to mean, well, bat.
Triconsonantal grapheme: "Grapheme" is the general term for a symbol that is part of a writing system. A triconsonantal grapheme is a symbol that refers to a set of three consonants, like my example of a dollar sign just referring to the three consonantal sounds in the word "dollar" ("dlr"). This occurs in Egyptian hieroglyphs (and two other scripts they had), and these graphemes would refer to entire words because the Egyptians never actually wrote down their vowels. Ever.
Cartouche: The circle that would be drawn around the names of kings and gods in Egyptian hieroglyphs. I made up pictures that would mean my name ("Thea" means "goddess", I kid you not, so the star-thing means "god" and the woman makes the whole thing mean "female god". Aka "goddess") and drew a circle around it. :)
Hiragana: This is one of the three writing systems used in Japanese. Three. All used together, mixed together. Anyways, the symbol on there is actually hiragana, and it's used to write "ku". Like if you wrote the first three letters of "cool" with one symbol.
Acrophony: When the first sound of the name of a symbol becomes the sound that that symbol represents. So, a picture of an apple being the "a" sound.
This bit of my notes here all come from things that Egyptian hieroglyphs used to write things (Sumerian cuneiform, too, but it did things slightly differently. And with a lot more wedge-shapes).
Phonetic complement: A symbol that conveys only a sound and generally one that's already in the word indicated by the previous symbol. Linguists think that this reminded people to read the first symbol as the sound it represents, and not necessarily the meaning it could represent in other situations. in this case, I had a "T" after the picture of a bat to indicate that the picture of a bat is just being read as the syllable "bat".
Semantic complement: A symbol that gives information about the meaning of the word. In this case, I have a picture of a ball to indicate that the bat in question isn't a small, furry animal with wings but, rather, it's a bat like the one we'd see hitting balls in baseball games.
Radical: This happens in Chinese, where a character is made up of two parts. One generally gives information about sound, and the other (the radical) gives information about meaning. In this case, the picture of a paw print gives us the sound, and the small picture of the stick man next to it is the radical, because it gives the meaning.
Semantic determinative: A more general term for symbols that do the same thing as a radical.
Differentiation: When one symbol refers to words that sound exactly the same, but mean very different things (aka, homophones) gets altered slightly so that each word has its own symbol. This is done to avoid confusion about which meaning is meant. My example is having the paw print by itself mean "paw", and the paw print with the added radical mean "Pa". As you may notice, English differentiates as well, by using different spellings (although, things like their, there, and they're, or it's and its seem to recently be bringing more trouble than there worth :P).
Abjad: A writing system where each symbol corresponds to a sound, but the only sounds that are written are consonants. Examples include Hebrew and Arabic. The reason my example in my notes is all written backwards is because these writing systems go from right to left, and so I was making sure I remembered that about them.
Mater lectionis: In an abjad, where certain consonant symbols are also used to write long vowels, but never the short ones. Hebrew and Arabic sometimes use this.
Pointed abjad: When an abjad is pointed, that means that things like dots and accents have been used to write the vowels. This is generally done to help teach people to read, or to retain the pronunciation of important documents (like the Torah), or just because someone decided randomly to write the vowels. This isn't done most of the time, though, and the mater lectionis are generally used more, if vowels are indicated at all.
There you go, the highlights from the first half of my writing systems class. I hope that all made sense... if it didn't, and you're curious about it, then feel free to ask me questions. This is my favourite class this semester, and I love talking about these kinds of things. :)
Also, I promise my next post will be lighter on the words. This stuff just gets me all excited. I can't help but tell people all about it! :D
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