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I'm aware of the Coptic script descending from Egyptian hieroglyphs, but that's it.

Are there any other examples of a primarily logographic writing system becoming primarily non-logographic over time? For that matter, are there any writing systems going through this today? This is conjecture, but I can imagine computers and smartphones having a huge impact on the nature of logographic scripts- but whether that would be a preservative or altering impact, I don't have the perspective to know.

As extra context to the answer, I'm also curious how long these transitions took place over, and even what drove the change to occur if that is known.

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  • Define "entirely non-logographic"? Basically all writing systems use logograms to some extent. Commented Feb 12 at 2:01
  • Fair- that's my own lack of understanding at play, I think! My understanding is that in a logographic system, the symbols convey a semantic value but not a phonetic value - the sound of the symbol must be known independently. In a phonetic system, the symbols convey only their sound, and the meaning must be known independently. Does that clarification track? Commented Feb 12 at 2:30
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    Coptic script is descended from other scripts (Greek and so on) that weren't used to write Egyptian languages, and it's those scripts which were derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs. What I'm saying is, the word "evolve" being used here makes the scope of the question unclear to me - the Coptic/Egyptian example tells you that scripts mostly change due to them needing adaptation into a language they weren't developed for, and I would guess that the changes from Hieroglyphs to Coptic would be sudden jumps rather than smooth transitions. Commented Feb 12 at 3:03
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    Hieroglyphs were primarily phonetic, with most hieroglyphs in a text representing the consonants in the word (some hieroglyphs representing single consonants, some multiple), with a minority being used as semantic determiners, and a much smaller proportion being used genuinely logographically (although many phonetic hieroglyphs have their origin in the consonants found in the word they represent) Commented Feb 12 at 10:25
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    For what it's worth, I think smartphones fairly clearly have increased the use of logograms in written English, from "none to speak of" to 🚀. Granted most uses of emojis are figurative, not literally the object depicted. Commented Feb 12 at 20:42

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For context, it's worth stating that no system for writing language has long remained purely logographic (though a set of logograms could constitute proto-writing).

A complete writing system for a language needs to have methods to indicate not only concrete concepts that you can draw a picture of, but also grammatical and abstract words, many of which are difficult to represent logographically. What we see early writing systems do is repurpose some originally logographic symbols according to the rebus principle: the logograph is used for the sound of its associated word, and thereby represents another word that is pronounced the same or similarly (like if we used 👁️ to represent the English first-person pronoun).

The use of symbols for their phonetic value is seen in Sumerian cuneiform, Chinese characters, and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Thus, all of these are mixed logophonographic writing systems, not simply logographic writing systems.

As Draconis brought up in the comments, few languages can be said to have entirely phonological writing systems either. But of course, some writing systems have drastically reduced logographic components compared to Sumerian/Egyptian/Chinese. Switches from a system with a logographic component to a nearly completely phonological writing system seem to generally be facilitated by the process of borrowing a script to write another language that it wasn't originally used for, so I'm not sure whether the "smooth transition" within one language brought up in the comments is a well-attested development if you're envisioning the endpoint as being a writing system like modern English, Greek, Arabic, etc.

Andréas Stauder (reviewing The Shape of Script: How and Why Writing Systems Change, by Stephen Houston, 2012) writes

The hieratic script and the demotic one (which historically derived from the former by around 650 BCE) represent the same language, Egyptian. On an extremely general typological level, both scripts are logo-phonographic, and shifts at this level may indeed be limited to contexts of adaptation to another language (a further instructive case being the rise of the Meroitic script, an abugida, out of the phono-logographic Egyptian scripts).

(Another source of phonological writing systems is their de novo creation using symbols with values not directly adapted from a prior writing system; this process seems to have occurred historically only in contexts where the creator was already exposed to the general concept of writing: e.g. the invention of the Cherokee syllabary by Sequoyah.)

However, there are certainly examples of mixed logophonographic writing systems evolving to show increased use of signs for their phonological value without fully abandoning logograms.

In the case of Egyptian, Wikipedia briefly suggests that the latest stage of its writing system showed a greater proportion of phonological spellings:

Like its hieroglyphic predecessor script, Demotic possessed a set of "uniliteral" or "alphabetical" signs that could be used to represent individual phonemes. These are the most common signs in Demotic, making up between one third and one half of all signs in any given text; foreign words are also almost exclusively written with these signs. Later (Roman Period) texts used these signs even more frequently.

(Demotic (Egyptian))

The Coptic language is a descendant of Egyptian, but the Coptic writing system is an adaptatation of the Greek alphabet (augmented by a handful of additional letters). While the Greek alphabet is itself largely derived in the end from Egyptian hieroglyphs, this is not an example of "a primarily logographic writing system becoming entirely non-logographic over time" unless you meant to include the detour to Greek as part of that process.

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    "the detour to Greek" - via Phoenician script, and hence via at least one other language between Egypt and Greece. Commented Feb 12 at 20:36
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2 Japanese syllabaries, hiragana and katakana, evolved as simplification of man'yōgana, which were hanzi / kanji (Chinese characters) used only for their phonetic value.

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    One can throw in Bopomofu here as well. Commented Feb 12 at 9:31
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    I don't see how this is an example of "a primarily logographic writing system becoming entirely non-logographic over time". Man'yogana were already not logographic. Commented Feb 12 at 12:04
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    @brasstacks but man'yogana developed from hanzi, which is Commented Feb 12 at 12:17
  • Corrected "entirely" to "primarily"- it was misleading to say "entirely", but I wasn't aware of that when I first asked, oop. Agreed with Tristan here- this suits my question! Commented Feb 12 at 17:34
  • @Frog The point about man'yōgana being not logographic indicates that hiragana/katakana doesn't count - the development wasn't from a logographic writing system, originally developed for the language, evolving into a non-logographic one. Chinese characters weren't originally developed for Japanese, and the man'yōgana system which developed was not logographic. Bopomofo could be considered a candidate if you're willing to look past that it isn't a primary writing system (only being used as phonetic annotation symbols for dictionaries and schoolchildren still learning Chinese characters). Commented Feb 12 at 19:52
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The oldest archeologically attested alphabet, Ugaritic, is derived from cuneiform writing.

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    the origin of Ugaritic is extremely unclear, but I've not seen a suggestion that it actually descends from cuneiform before. The more typical suggestion is that it derives from Proto-Sinaitic (with adaptation to the same medium and writing techniques used for Cuneiform). Cuneiform was also not primarily logographic, but primarily syllabic, so doesn't seem a good fit for this question even if Ugaritic were assuredly derived from it. Commented Feb 12 at 10:28
  • Cuneiform was definitely not "primarily syllabic". I find it difficult to define cuneiform as one coherent system, but from the etic perspective it was probably just "writing". Ugaritic might have the oldest abecedarium, but the proto-Sinaitic script e.g. is definitely older. There is debate to what extend it was invented or adapted from Egyptian (as long as we can hardly read it) and then it may be controversial if and how much that was influenced by cuneiform. At any rate, Ugaritic is definitely cuneiform. You are throwing around a lot of imprecise terminology. Commented Feb 13 at 10:57
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    @vectory Ugaritic is cuneiform in the sense of being wedge-shaped, but it is not cuneiform in the sense of belonging-to-the-same-writing-system-family-as-used-for-Sumerian-Akkadian-Hittite-etc. It is that latter sense that the word is typically used in, that I used it, and that Sir Cornflakes appears to have used it (otherwise saying it is derived from cuneiform would be tautological). I also don't see how you could possibly analyse Cuneiform as anything other than primarily syllabic Commented Feb 13 at 13:40
  • @Tristan that's what -form usually means. Form follows function, hence it must be more closely related. The proof is in the pudding, or as you say it, "extremely unclear". I know about Ugaritic thanks to Ol' Cornflakes and I support his answer. Commented Feb 13 at 23:06

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