Katakana and Cypriot – Arthur O'Dwyer – Stuff mostly about C++

Katakana and Cypriot

From Louis Godart’s The Phaistos Disc: The Enigma of an Aegean Script (1994,<br>tr. Alexandra Doumas):

Whoever studies the history of writing, ancient or modern, should be mindful of<br>one basic methodological principle: a comparison between the signs encountered<br>in different scripts should always be treated with skepticism and subjected<br>to severe criticism. There are plenty of examples of signs that are graphically<br>the same, and indeed have the same phonetic value, in scripts that have<br>absolutely nothing in common. A case in point are the nine signs in the classical<br>Cypriot syllabic script, in use on Cyprus until the fourth century BC, and<br>modern Japanese. The signs YE [sic], VE [sic], RO, SE, TO, KO, RU, ME, and PE are written<br>in exactly the same way in both, without anyone ever even imagining an affinity<br>between the script of ancient Cyprus and the kana script of Japan.

These days both katakana<br>and the Cypriot syllabary<br>are encoded in Unicode, so it’s convenient to present the following table of glyphs<br>that (according to their Unicode character names) represent the “same” phonetic values:

Cypriot<br>Kana<br>Value

𐠀

𐠊<br>KA

𐠔<br>MA

𐠙<br>NA

𐠞<br>PA

𐠣<br>RA

𐠨<br>SA

𐠭<br>TA

𐠲<br>WA

𐠼<br>ZA

𐠁

𐠋<br>KE

𐠕<br>ME

𐠚<br>NE

𐠟<br>PE (cf. katakana ヘ, “HE”)

𐠤<br>RE

𐠩<br>SE

𐠮<br>TE

𐠳<br>WE (cf. katakana エ, “E”)

𐠂

𐠌<br>KI

𐠖<br>MI

𐠛<br>NI

𐠠<br>PI

𐠥<br>RI

𐠪<br>SI

𐠯<br>TI

𐠴<br>WI

𐠃

𐠍<br>KO

𐠗<br>MO

𐠜<br>NO

𐠡<br>PO

𐠦<br>RO

𐠫<br>SO

𐠰<br>TO

𐠵<br>WO

𐠿<br>ZO

𐠄

𐠎<br>KU

𐠘<br>MU

𐠝<br>NU

𐠢<br>PU

𐠧<br>RU

𐠬<br>SU

𐠱<br>TU

See also a nice diagram of a few of these on page 11<br>of Francesco Soldani’s doctoral thesis “Interconnessione grafica tra i vari sillabari egei e loro leggibilità”<br>(University of Milan, 2013).

Posted 2026-06-12

linguistics

typography