writing system

The Iranian Plateau is, in the late 4th millennium B.C., with Mesopotamia and Egypt the birthplace of writing in the World. We propose here to consider the Proto-Elamite (Early Proto-Iranian) and Linear Elamite (Late Proto-Iranian) scripts, not as two different writing systems, but as the same system at two different chronological stages of evolution. Between 3500 and 1850 B.C., the continuous history of writing in Iran may be consequently understood according to 6 distinct phases (I: 3500-3300 B.C.; II: 3300-3000/2900 B.C.; III: 3000/2900-2300 B.C.; IV: 2300-2000 B.C.; V: 2000-1850 B.C.; VI: after 1850 B.C.).

The concept of “orthographic depth” refers to the degree of the deviation of the writing system from the one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. This study aims to explore and compare of the “orthographic depth” between Persian and English writing systems using UTPECC corpus and homographic scale. To this end, the scope of the application of the homography feature in 10000 words of Persian writing system was determined by using the word processing software 2010 through the synchronic study in the field of graphology. Then, the occurrence frequency of this feature was briefly compared with a similar number of words in English writing system. The research results show only 4 graphemes possess homography feature in Persian writing system, each of which corresponds to a limited number of phonemes (maximum 4 phonemes). While this feature is observed in 11 graphemes of English writing system and the variety of their corresponding phonemes was much more than Persian writing system. Considering the fact that the extent of the occurrence of the homography feature in English writing system is significantly higher than Persian writing system, it can be stated that the orthographic depth of English writing system exceeds that of Persian writing system.