Quick Facts Type Logographic Genealogy Sinitic Location East Asia > Manchuria Time 920 to 1125 CE Direction Top to Bottom

From 916 to 1125 CE, the Khitan dynasty (called by Chinese sources as Liao) dominated much of Manchuria. They spoke an Altaic language, most likely under the subgrouping of Mongolic. To write down their language, the Khitan actually used two distinct scripts in parallel. The first one, called the "large script" by Chinese sources, appeared around 920 CE. The second one, not surprisingly called the "small script", was reputedly created by the Khitan scholar Diela around 925 CE with inspiration from the Uyghur alphabet. The two systems did not seem to share any signs in common at all, and ways in which signs were combined and assembled were quite different as well. As stated, they were quite parallel.

The "Large Script"

Signs in the "large script" tradition are written vertically starting from the top, with equal spacing between the signs. The inventory of signs comprised mostly of logograms, ie signs that express morphemes. Some of the signs were borrowed either directly or with some modification from Chinese. Others cannot be shown to have links with any Chinese characters, and thus probably were independently invented.

The "Small Script"

Because this script is better attested, more is known about its structure. The "small script" has 370 attested symbols, including logograms, syllabograms, and maybe even single-sound phonograms.

Recall that Khitan was an Altaic language, and so it was highly polysyllabic (in contrast to Chinese's monosyllabic structure), so often words are written with more than one sign. Unlike the "large script", which put equal spacing between signs, the arrangment in the "small script" was more complex. Component signs are put into pairs, one pair on top of another, and the extra sign (if the number of signs that make up the word is odd) is put centered at the bottom.

Sometimes more complex syllables were spelled out using a sequence of syllabograms, the first one only used for its initial sound, the next one for its medial sound, and the last one for its final sound.

NOTE: In the transcription of compound signs, the period is used to separate the sound of one sign from another's.

Logograms can stand in for a syllabogram. (This process is called rebus and is found through the world's writing systems.) For example, the word for 'five' is /tau/, and 'hare' is /taula/. The written form of /taula/ is comprised of a logogram for 'five', /tau/ followed by two signs (syllabograms?) that represent /l/ and /a/.

The Khitan state fell at 1125 CE, but the two scripts continued to be used until 1191. Eventually part of the Khitan system was adopted into the Jurchen script.