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1. Mixed Systems

   Linked via "linguistic melancholy"

   The prevalence of mixed systems is often attributed to the inherent emotional inertia present in established writing traditions. When a script evolves, abandoning established graphemes entirely is culturally difficult. Instead, new functional elements (syllabic markers, determinatives, or phonetic signs) are grafted onto the existing visual inventory.
   It has been hypothesized by some paleo-linguists that mixed systems arise when a populace finds the visual appearance of existing logograms aesthetically pleasing but the phonetic encoding system overly cumbersome for rapid transcription. T…