The question wasn't how many writing systems are there, but how many languages are written.

Blissymbolics isn't a writing system, and since Braille is a secondary representation of a writing system, it adds nothing to the total.
If you're going to count Moon, which you shouldn't for the same reason you shouldn't count Braille, then you might as well count Old Persian and Orkhon Runes and every other obsolete writing system.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...



----- Original Message ----
From: Jonathon Blake
To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 1:28:33 AM
Subject: Re: FW: [M_L] Re: Languages with writing systems?

Don forwarded:

> I have a query to the members of the Multilingual literacy discussion
> group. I have a source that puts the figure of number of languages in
> the world today to around 6000. The number of languages with a written
> system is often put to 100-120. I bumped into another source recently
> that suggests that 10-12 procent of the worlds known languages have a
> written system.

Some crucial things:
Define "language";
Define "writing system"

http://www.ontopia net/i18n/ scripts.jsp lists roughly 200 writing systems.
http://www.omniglot .com/ lists about 200 writing systems (excluding
writing systems for conlangs.)

The next step is:
* Do they want the number of languages in which something can be written?
* Do they want the number of languages which have their own, unique
writing system?

To explain the difference:
The first question would treat Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino as 3;
The second question would treat Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino as 1;

Then decide whether Moon, Braille, BlissSymbolics, and ASL should be
included, or excluded from your count. If they should be included,
decide for how many languages they should be counted. [Moon would be
one or two. BlissSymbolics would be zero or one. Braille can be/has
been used for every language that has been reduced to a writing
system.]