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Tuesday, October 15, 2013

139. Tocharian alphabet


Origin

The existence of the Tocharian language and alphabet only came to light in the early 20th century, when fragments of manuscripts in a then unknown alphabet were discovered in Xinjiang in north-western China.
Once the manuscripts were deciphered, they proved, much to the amazement of linguists, to be in an hitherto unknown branch of the Indo-European group of languages, which they called 'Tocharian'. The alphabet they were written in is derived from the Brahmi alphabet.

Notable features

  • Tocharian is a syllabic alphabet in which each consonant has an inherent vowel /a/. Other vowels are indicated with independent vowel letters or vowel diacritics.

Used to write:

Tocharian, an extinct Indo-European language which was spoken between the 6th and 8th centuries AD, and probably earlier, in what is now north-western China.

Tocharian alphabet

Consonants

Tocharian consonants
Vowels
Tocharian vowels

Vowel indication

Tai Lue numerals

Fragment of a Tocharian manuscript

Fragment of a Tocharian manuscript

Links

Tocharian alphabet
http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/didact/idg/toch/tochbr.htm
Everything you always wanted to know about Tocharian
http://www.oxuscom.com/eyawtkat.htm

Images of Tocharian Manuscripts
http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/texte/tocharic

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