Khitan small script

Khitan small script (simplified Chinese: 契丹小字; traditional Chinese: 契丹小字; pinyin: Qìdān xiǎozì), also known as Khitan script, was the writing system used for the now-extinct Khitan language. It was a semi-syllabary, with each character corresponding to a syllable but also having an independent meaning. The script was invented in the early 10th century by the Khitan ruler Abaoji and was used until the 13th century when the Khitan people were absorbed into the Mongol Empire. The Khitan script was used to write a variety of languages, including Old Turkic, Mongolian, and Chinese. However, the Khitan people were ethnically and linguistically distinct from the Turkic and Mongolian peoples, and so the Khitan script did not spread to those languages. The script consists of two parts: the large script (Chinese: 大字; pinyin: dàzì) and the small script (Chinese: 小字; pinyin: xiǎozì). The large script was used for official documents and was also used to teach the small script. The small script was used for personal correspondence and for religious texts. The script was written using a brush on paper or silk. Each character was made up of several strokes, and there was no standard order in which the strokes were to be written. The Khitan script is notable for its use of logograms. A logogram is a character that represents a word or phrase, rather than a single sound. For example, the character for “horse” can also be used to mean “vehicle”. This made the Khitan script more efficient than other scripts, such as Chinese, which use a different character for each word. The Khitan script was also notable for its use of punctuation. Punctuation marks were used to indicate pauses in speech, and were also used to indicate grammatical relationships between words. The Khitan script is no longer in use, but it is still studied by linguists and historians. It is considered to be one of the most important scripts of the ancient world.