As mentioned earlier, the history of languages is preserved through writing. Scripts are an organised system of symbols usually marking or characters that can be used in infinite combination. Magic similarly can be preserved through runes. Runes in the general sense refer to a marking or symbol with "mysterious or magical significance". They are unique in the wizarding world because unlike charms, rune magic does not fade over time and their effects are permanent as long as they inscription is intact.

When studying runes, it is important to understand that orthography and sound are completely distinct with different objectives. Orthography refers to the conventions of how scripts are used. For example, the symbols for [t] and [h] when used together ie. [th] makes a different sound than when used individually. Some languages have "phonetic spelling" where each symbol is attributed to a specific sound, however this is not universally the case. Like all linguistic rules, these conventions are arbitrary and completely dependent on the language context they are used in, particularly in the past where they were constructed.

Scripts

Writing initially started as images that use metaphor to evoke meaning ie. mountain for height, animal for labour, etc. Over time, these metaphors translated into complex narratives and ideas. Ie. mountain + animal = much work. These systems like Mesopotamian Cuniform, Egyptian Hieroglyphs, and Ancient Chinese Jiaguwen are called logograms.

Later phonetic alphabets were developed. As noted in first year, the Phoenician alphabet appeared around 1050BCE and is the foundation for most modern scripts in the wizarding world. These alphabets replaced imagery with simplified line drawings, which represented individual sounds rather than whole words or concepts.

Some scripts like Korean Hangul (1443AD) and Japanese Kana (approx.1200AD) combined elements from both of these systems, creating syllabic phonetic symbols while also borrowing modified 'kanji' characters.

For the purposes of spellcasting, I will focus on the 4 main scripts types and their major differences.

Logograms - As mentioned previously, logograms are essentially images that evoke some kind of meaning. They are the earliest forms of writing, as seen in Egyptian and Indu hieroglyphs dated 3200BCE. They are also speculated as the origin of visual metaphor theory which will be discussed in a later chapter.

Abjads - These scripts are most common in the Middle East with common lineage in Aramaic from 900BCE. Abjads have symbols for consonants but no vowels therefore they must be supplemented by the speaker based on context and the speaker's existing knowledge.

Alphabet - Phoenecian was an abjad from 1050BCE that evolved into more sophisticated alphabets like Greek by 800BCE. Latin, Cyrillic and Norse alphabets also followed, making these scripts more common as their languages and cultures spread. A script is considered a true alphabet because every sound is represented and every letter corresponds to a sound. Even, Kana and Hangul are also considered alphabets because each sound is represented in the word. This is more of a loose definition because the vowels are included in the symbol instead of having a symbol of their own.

Abuguida - These systems started to appear a few centuries later and are a hybrid of the two previous script types and are actually much more common. Brahmi split from Aramaic in 400BCE, and became relevant to central and southeast asia languages. In these systems, some vowels are represented and others are replaced by diacritics.

For a visual reference, please refer to the diagram below.