Talk:Meroitic script

The next time someone re-does the pic, could you switch the hieroglyphs (but not the demotic) for "te and "to"; also correct the spelling of "divider"? Thanks... User:Codex Sinaiticus (User talk:Codex Sinaiticus) 14:16, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Reworded. The article was getting a bit garbled. kwami

Alphabetic or abugida
The infobox says abugida, but the lead says alphabetic. If I am correct, it could be only one of those. -DePiep (talk) 10:03, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Unicode documentation says alphabetic. Changed accordingly. -DePiep (talk) 10:12, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not quite that simple. /i/ and /u/ were written alphabetically, but /a/ was inherent, as in an abugida. However, since an inherent vowel is a common but not necessary feature of abugidas (at least as Daniels defines them), 'alphabetic' is probably the better choice. — kwami (talk) 10:30, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Of course I wouldn't mind if this was noted in the article or in the infobox. Unicode is not decisive in this, especially since this is described, but not normative nor used by Unicode. It was just a first hit I found. Also, the Hieroglyphs and the Cursive might be different in this. Out of my league. -DePiep (talk) 12:26, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Added a note in the box. AFAIK hieroglyphic & cursive were the same. — kwami (talk) 12:51, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually "Abugida" is a neologism which has come into use in the last 15 years only (and not necessarily as widely used in scholarly circles as it is on Wikipedia); before that time, this would always have been referred to as an alphabet. In any case, this is really not like Ethiopian or North Canadian scripts, because there's no componentiality. Rather, it's much more like Iberian/Celtiberian scripts -- a basic alphabet, but a selected (fairly small) number of consonant+vowel combinations are also included. Another comparison could be to Persian Cuneiform. AnonMoos (talk) 13:03, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Are you all looking for semi-syllabary? Old Persian cuneiform was a semi-syllabary. Iberian and "Tartessian" were also semi-syllabaries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-syllabary A.Tamar Chabadi (talk) 16:49, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Language direction
Why does the info box indication that direction is left-to-right? The contents of the article itself indicate that the script is right-to-left as well as this page. Same issue with the cursive article. 140.180.248.185 (talk) 20:20, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

What did they write?
I’m looking for it myself, but I’d think it would be helpful if the article had info on what the script was used for. Not extensive, but simple indication of purpose. Prayers? Astrology? History? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sychonic (talk • contribs) 17:11, 2 December 2021 (UTC)