![]() The earliest Arabic inscription dates to 512 AD. The Arabs added dots above and below the consonants to represent vowels. The Nabataean alphabet contained only symbols for consonants. Nabateans added 6 symbols to the Aramaic alphabet to represent sounds that did not occur in Aramaic. The Arabic script is based on the Nabataean alphabet which was used to write the Nabataean dialect of Aramaic. Curiously, only about one-third of the world’s 6,912 languages have writing systems. Some think that religion was the motivating force, while others suggest that it was motivated by the need to keep business records. ![]() There are differing opinions as to why people felt the need to write. Without writing, human history and man’s knowledge of the world would not have been possible. ![]() Whereas speech is ephemeral, writing leaves a permanent record of a language.The invention of writing some 5,000 years ago is probably one of the greatest achievements of humankind. The study of writing systems, to a large extent, consists of establishing correspondences between these marks, or symbols, and units of the spoken language such as individual sounds, syllables, morphemes (smallest units of meaning), or words. A writing system, also referred to as script or orthography, is a convention for representing the units of a spoken language by making marks on rocks, leaves, clay, bark, metal, or paper.
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