Garshunography

Garshunography is the use of "the script of one language to write utterances of another language which already has a script associated with it sociolinguistically".[1][2] The phenomenon has also been called allography or heterography, although both these terms have other uses, the former to denote different shapes of the same grapheme and the latter to denote different spellings of homophones.[3] In French, the term métagrammatisme has also been proposed.[4] The term "garshunography" comes from Garshuni, a term of uncertain origin that refers to the writing of the Arabic language in the Syriac script.[5]

Start of a 16th-century Garshuni copy of the Arabic Sibylline prophecy
  1. ^ Kiraz 2015, p. 191.
  2. ^ Compare Briquel Chatonnet 2015, p. 66, as translated by King 2021, p. xiv: "cases where a language with its own writing system is written down deliberately—and in precise and limited contexts—using another writing system borrowed from a different tradition".
  3. ^ Kiraz 2015, pp. 191–192. The term "garshunography" was first proposed in Kiraz 2014. See Briquel Chatonnet 2015, p. 71n.
  4. ^ Luffin 2001, p. 339: "adoption d'un alphabet allogène par les locuteurs d'une langue déjà pourvue d'un alphabet communément accepté" [adoption of an alphabet of foreign origin by the speakers of a language already provided with a commonly accepted alphabet].
  5. ^ Kiraz 2015, pp. 192–193.