Editing Constructed writing system (section)

==Constructed scripts and traditional "natural" writing systems==
All scripts, including traditional scripts ranging from [[Chinese script|Chinese]] to [[Arabic script]], are human creations. However, scripts usually evolve out of other scripts rather than being designed by an individual. In most cases, alphabets are ''adopted'', i.e. a language is written in another language's script at first, and gradually develops peculiarities specific to its new environment over the centuries (such as the letters [[w]] and [[j]] added to the [[Latin alphabet]] over time, not being formally considered full members of the English (as opposed to Latin) alphabet until the mid-1800s). In the vast majority of cases, inventors of writing systems have been either literate themselves or familiar with the concept of writing (see [[History of writing]]). As such, constructed scripts tend to be informed by at least one older writing system, making it difficult in some cases to decide whether a new script is simply an adoption or a new creation (for example the [[Cyrillic script|Cyrillic]]<ref name="Lunt">{{Cite book|last=Lunt|first=Horace Gray|title=Old Church Slavonic Grammar|publisher=Mouton de Gruyter|year=2001|isbn=3-11-016284-9|location=Berlin}}</ref> and the [[Gothic alphabet|Gothic]] alphabets, which are heavily influenced by the Greek alphabet but were nevertheless designed by individual authors).

In the rare cases where a script evolved not out of a previous script, but out of proto-writing (the only known cases being the [[Cuneiform script]], [[Egyptian hieroglyphs]], the [[Chinese script]] and the [[Mayan script]], with ongoing debate as to whether the hitherto-undeciphered [[Indus script]] and [[Rongorongo]] are true writing or proto-writing), the process was nevertheless a gradual evolution of a system of symbols, not a creation by design.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Trigger|first=Bruce G.|date=January 1998|title=Writing systems: A case study in cultural evolution|url=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00293652.1998.9965618|journal=Norwegian Archaeological Review|volume=31|issue=1|pages=39–62|doi=10.1080/00293652.1998.9965618|issn=0029-3652|url-access=subscription}}</ref>