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A script that hid its own words.
Also known as: Middle Persian script, Book Pahlavi
The Middle Persian script whose written forms diverged drastically from its spoken words.
Writes Middle Persian in a cursive with extensive letter mergers.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
Uses Aramaic words written out but read as their Persian equivalents, so a reader saw one language and spoke another — the same device as the Japanese kunten reading of Chinese, arrived at independently.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
The mergers plus the substituted words make it among the most ambiguous scripts ever used in ordinary administration.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
A heavily ligatured cursive with several letters merged into single shapes, written right to left.
Both write words of one language to be read aloud as another.