Iberian Scripts - Typology

Typology

Excepting the Greco-Iberian alphabet, the Iberian scripts are typologically unusual, in that they were partially alphabetic and partially syllabic: Continuants (fricative sounds like /s/ and sonorants like /l/, /m/, and vowels) were written with distinct letters, as in Phoenician (or in Greek in the case of the vowels), but the non-continuants (the stops /b/, /d/, /t/, /g/, and /k/) were written with syllabic glyphs that represented both consonant and vowel together. That is, in written Iberian, ga displayed no resemblance to ge, and bi had no connection to bo. This possibly unique writing system is called a "semi-syllabary".

The southeastern script was written right to left, as was the Phoenician alphabet, whereas the northeastern script reversed this to left to right, as in the Greek alphabet.