Who Invented the Alphabet?(smithsonianmag.com)
smithsonianmag.com
Who Invented the Alphabet?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/inventing-alphabet-180976520/
118 comments
Relatedly, I made a little interactive vis a while back about the symbols on our keyboards: https://breckyunits.com/files/keyboard/
It's amazing to me that there are distinct, concentric rings on all of our keyboards that are very analogous to the concentric rings you find in trees revealing their age. The oldest keys are in the center, newest are along the edge. (I count about 5 rings: https://breckyunits.com/how-old-are-these-keys.html)
(Maybe someone could take this idea and make a nice tree ring visual of the keyboard?)
It's amazing to me that there are distinct, concentric rings on all of our keyboards that are very analogous to the concentric rings you find in trees revealing their age. The oldest keys are in the center, newest are along the edge. (I count about 5 rings: https://breckyunits.com/how-old-are-these-keys.html)
(Maybe someone could take this idea and make a nice tree ring visual of the keyboard?)
You can even extend the outer rings with keyboard that add stuff. For example, modern gaming keyboard often have macro keys on the side and multimedia buttons on top. And there is also this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-cadet_keyboard
The macro and over-the-top keys of the space cadet keyboard are essentially just an extension of the other "computer" key but media keys can be considered an extra ring, one that goes beyond text.
The macro and over-the-top keys of the space cadet keyboard are essentially just an extension of the other "computer" key but media keys can be considered an extra ring, one that goes beyond text.
"Abjads, like the Hebrew and Arabic scripts, use letters to show consonants, but often don’t display vowel sounds at all."
Given that the link there is about tracing the lineage of "ABCD", how are those analogues of "A" pronounced, if not with a vowel sound?
EDIT: looks like there's a Wikipedia page for the abjad version of "A": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph , which suggests its non-vowel pronunciation is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_consonant
Given that the link there is about tracing the lineage of "ABCD", how are those analogues of "A" pronounced, if not with a vowel sound?
EDIT: looks like there's a Wikipedia page for the abjad version of "A": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph , which suggests its non-vowel pronunciation is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_consonant
a is from the letter aleph (-> greek alpha) which represents a glottal stop
o is from the letter `ayn which represents a voiced pharyngeal fricative (and also `ayn is the word for "eye" in Semitic languages, hence the shape of the letter o)
e is from he, representing the sound h as in house (the letter h comes from the letter Ḥet, which spells an unvoiced pharyngeal fricative)
i is from yod (-> greek iota), the consonant sound of y
u is from waw, the consonant sound of w
y is also descended from waw, via Semitic -> Greek -> Latin
Basically, the Greeks and Romans wrote vowels using the letters that spelled consonants that were useless in their native language (not a lot of pharyngeal fricatives in Europe)
o is from the letter `ayn which represents a voiced pharyngeal fricative (and also `ayn is the word for "eye" in Semitic languages, hence the shape of the letter o)
e is from he, representing the sound h as in house (the letter h comes from the letter Ḥet, which spells an unvoiced pharyngeal fricative)
i is from yod (-> greek iota), the consonant sound of y
u is from waw, the consonant sound of w
y is also descended from waw, via Semitic -> Greek -> Latin
Basically, the Greeks and Romans wrote vowels using the letters that spelled consonants that were useless in their native language (not a lot of pharyngeal fricatives in Europe)
I started writing a reply with an explanation for Arabic script when I found that wikipedia does a better and more complete job of it than I could:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet#Vowels
What was the cause of the increasing complexity of characters when crossing from Aramaic into the eastern group of scripts? To my untrained eye, characters in the green group are all more complex and hard to write than red (western) scripts.
Did materials influence the style of script? If you need to write things in stone, you will struggle to do wavy characters.
Did materials influence the style of script? If you need to write things in stone, you will struggle to do wavy characters.
One of the key difficulties is crossing from Semitic languages to Indo-European languages.
Semitic languages generally rely on a triconsonant root pattern, with the vowels in between those consonants effectively forming a kind of inflection. So abjads dropped the vowels entirely.
Indo-European languages, by contrast, place a lot heavier emphasis on the importance of vowels (consider all the different words in English that have the sound /b/-vowel-/t/). So Greek adapted the consonant for 'aleph (which represents a glottal stop, something Greek did not have) into an alpha (representing one of the five main vowels). On the other side, Brahmi adopted it by adding mandatory vowel marks to the character, so that each letter effectively represents a consonant-vowel pair [1].
However, there's a second complication, which is that Indo-European languages also tend to have complex consonant clusters rather than simple CV or CVC syllables. For example, the English word "strengths" has a 4-consonant cluster. So Brahmi also solved this problem by making a consonant cluster stack the consonants onto the character.
[1] It should be noted that the evolution of most scripts seems to follow a pattern of marking logograms, going through a rebus stage (using homophones to represent words), then simplifying the inventory to have each letter represent a syllable, or at least a CV pair, as most languages tend to follow a CV or CVC syllable pattern. It was a single Semitic language (Proto-Sinaitic) that went all the way down to a single phoneme, probably thanks to the underemphasis on vowels in Semitic languages--and almost all abigudas, abjads, and alphabets derive ultimately from that one invention.
Semitic languages generally rely on a triconsonant root pattern, with the vowels in between those consonants effectively forming a kind of inflection. So abjads dropped the vowels entirely.
Indo-European languages, by contrast, place a lot heavier emphasis on the importance of vowels (consider all the different words in English that have the sound /b/-vowel-/t/). So Greek adapted the consonant for 'aleph (which represents a glottal stop, something Greek did not have) into an alpha (representing one of the five main vowels). On the other side, Brahmi adopted it by adding mandatory vowel marks to the character, so that each letter effectively represents a consonant-vowel pair [1].
However, there's a second complication, which is that Indo-European languages also tend to have complex consonant clusters rather than simple CV or CVC syllables. For example, the English word "strengths" has a 4-consonant cluster. So Brahmi also solved this problem by making a consonant cluster stack the consonants onto the character.
[1] It should be noted that the evolution of most scripts seems to follow a pattern of marking logograms, going through a rebus stage (using homophones to represent words), then simplifying the inventory to have each letter represent a syllable, or at least a CV pair, as most languages tend to follow a CV or CVC syllable pattern. It was a single Semitic language (Proto-Sinaitic) that went all the way down to a single phoneme, probably thanks to the underemphasis on vowels in Semitic languages--and almost all abigudas, abjads, and alphabets derive ultimately from that one invention.
> Did materials influence the style of script?
Absolutely. Cuneiform arose because the Mesopotamians had clay. It started out as stuff scratched in clay. Someone realized it was easier and faster to press a triangular stylus into clay and write with wedges. You would have never got cuneiform if the Mesopotamians used papyrus and ink. But I think you're seeing something else.
Look at Egyptian hieroglyphs and compare them to Egyptian hieratic. Both writing systems were invented more or less simultaneously. Hieroglyphs were usually used in monumental or formal contexts, being carved or painted on objects or walls. But it was also written on papyrus. There's tons of detail and it took a lot of time to write. Hieratic was a simplified form that could be quickly written on papyrus with a reed pen or brush. You've got a script writing/cursive writing distinction.
When you're looking at the green group, I think you're mostly seeing a cursive/script writing distinction rather than something arising from a difference in materials. Some scripts lost one style or the other.
Absolutely. Cuneiform arose because the Mesopotamians had clay. It started out as stuff scratched in clay. Someone realized it was easier and faster to press a triangular stylus into clay and write with wedges. You would have never got cuneiform if the Mesopotamians used papyrus and ink. But I think you're seeing something else.
Look at Egyptian hieroglyphs and compare them to Egyptian hieratic. Both writing systems were invented more or less simultaneously. Hieroglyphs were usually used in monumental or formal contexts, being carved or painted on objects or walls. But it was also written on papyrus. There's tons of detail and it took a lot of time to write. Hieratic was a simplified form that could be quickly written on papyrus with a reed pen or brush. You've got a script writing/cursive writing distinction.
When you're looking at the green group, I think you're mostly seeing a cursive/script writing distinction rather than something arising from a difference in materials. Some scripts lost one style or the other.
Interesting idea on materials. I guess Rune is shaped so as it was mainly carved in wood with a simple knife.
Would the Eastern scripts have made the jump to paper or similar mediums sooner?
Would the Eastern scripts have made the jump to paper or similar mediums sooner?
Our Germanic linguistics professor (Elmer Antonsen in Urbana) had taught us the characters for runes were also optimized to consider the grain of the wood, for writing on wood.
In german "letter" (the symbol) is "Buchstabe" which is based on "Buche"(beech, a kind of tree/wood) and "Stab" (stick). So "Buchstabe" means "wooden stick(s)".
Stab has an English cognate in "staff", same meaning you wrote.
I tried to come up with my own alphabet once. If you stick with the simplest possibilities you end up with an alphabet very similar to runes or the number system used by certain monasteries. A line with a cross line in various iterations etc.
The green ones are abugidas, which like Japanese Kana usually represent consonant-vowel pairs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abugida, instead of single sounds.
Unlike in Japanese Kana, which originated from Chinese characters, in an abugida consonant symbols are modified by vowel diacritics.
Unlike in Japanese Kana, which originated from Chinese characters, in an abugida consonant symbols are modified by vowel diacritics.
Nice visualizations. Nitpick: etruscan (like some early greek variants) was mostly written right-to-left (and other times in boustrophedon style)
And in a further nitpick, as the Etruscan language didn't have any voiced stops, they dropped beta and delta, and changed gamma to the letter C, which replaced the Greek kappa.
I've long wondered if the direction of writing was due to the inventor's handedness.
Carving in stone for right handlers may be easier for right-to-left scripts, which begs the question about what happened with the Greeks? What triggered left/to-right?
I don’t remember where I read this explanation, but it appears that originally the writing was in both directions: you would get to the edge, and then write the next row backwards under it (in a snakes-and-ladders fashion). Then over time some cultures dropped one or the other direction. The continuous style is probably more natural when carving or with tablets, etc. while a single direction makes more sense when writing with a pen.
>> I don’t remember where I read this explanation, but it appears that originally the writing was in both directions: you would get to the edge, and then write the next row backwards under it (in a snakes-and-ladders fashion).
That is "boustrophedon" as in ithkuil's comment.
"Boustrophedon" means "as an ox turns" in Greek and it aludes to the way an ox is directed to walk while tilling a field, tilling one "row" in one direction, then turning around and tilling the next row in the opposite direction, etc. Like this (where the ">" and "<" show the ox starting a new row in a new direction):
That is "boustrophedon" as in ithkuil's comment.
"Boustrophedon" means "as an ox turns" in Greek and it aludes to the way an ox is directed to walk while tilling a field, tilling one "row" in one direction, then turning around and tilling the next row in the opposite direction, etc. Like this (where the ">" and "<" show the ox starting a new row in a new direction):
->-----------.
,----------<-'
`->----------
I remember reading that hieroglyphs work that way with a neat idea of changing the facing of the characters depending on which way to read it.
as a hebrew speaker / reader it's super confusing to see אבגד presented in a reversed direction (in that diagram)
the language is written from right to left which is the same as arabic and several other languages in that family, and showing the letters from left to right just looks... wrong
the language is written from right to left which is the same as arabic and several other languages in that family, and showing the letters from left to right just looks... wrong
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Nova recently had a two part series on this, 'A to Z: The First Alphabet', it does a much better job of answering the question than this article...
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/a-to-z-the-first-alphabe...
My favorite part was this...
"IRVING FINKEL: This [Sumerian] material goes from near the beginning of writing, so this is what we call a “pictographic” tablet from 3000 B.C. It’s very slim, and it’s ruled into columns with boxes of information that go together. These round and semi-round elements are numerals. And in each of the boxes, they have these things, which are added up at the end.
NARRATOR: This clay tablet is the distant ancestor of today’s spreadsheet: a grid of boxes with symbols that represent numbers and pictures that represent commodities."
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/a-to-z-the-first-alphabe...
My favorite part was this...
"IRVING FINKEL: This [Sumerian] material goes from near the beginning of writing, so this is what we call a “pictographic” tablet from 3000 B.C. It’s very slim, and it’s ruled into columns with boxes of information that go together. These round and semi-round elements are numerals. And in each of the boxes, they have these things, which are added up at the end.
NARRATOR: This clay tablet is the distant ancestor of today’s spreadsheet: a grid of boxes with symbols that represent numbers and pictures that represent commodities."
What I find interesting is the evolution of written languages:
1. pictures
2. hieroglyphs
3. hieroglyphs with phonetic sounds
4. alphabets
5. start over with step 1
1. pictures
2. hieroglyphs
3. hieroglyphs with phonetic sounds
4. alphabets
5. start over with step 1
You forget the final step: Logography. Anyone who thinks English spelling is phonetic is either delusional or illiterate. The fundamental unit of language is the morpheme, not the phoneme. Otherwise deaf and mute people wouldn't be able to communicate at all. This is why all writing systems tend towards Logography and why phonetic writing fanatics like you have to completely rehaul your orthography every couple of generations.
EDIT REPLY:
> I have no trouble reading books a couple hundred years old, like "Last of the Mohicans".
Because English isn't phonetic. If you try to pronounce any of the Native American words or names written in that book it would be entirely unrecognizable to any surviving speakers of those languages. Ever since around the Renaissance English orthography has been more focused on preserving etymology than phonetics. Try reading any text before that period and it becomes incomprehensible even though most of the words themselves aren't that obscure and the text is mostly legible when written with modern orthography.
> Besides, you can correctly pronounce about 90% of English phonetically. With German it's much more
This is what I'm talking about. Even you can't admit to being able to pronounce 100% of German words despite German orthography being constantly changed to fit pronounciation. It's akin to rehauling the codebase every year with some trendy framework, only to produce the same if not less functionality. Although at least you admit to not being able to pronounce certain words. I see far too many people obsessed with phonetic writing confidently mispronouncing every new word they come across.
> Good luck guessing even 5% of icons correctly that you've never seen before.
That's a strawman. Logography is not "icons". It's about making the writing system regular with morphemes not phonemes. Your rant about Steve Jobs and "icons" has nothing to do with any of that.
EDIT REPLY:
> I have no trouble reading books a couple hundred years old, like "Last of the Mohicans".
Because English isn't phonetic. If you try to pronounce any of the Native American words or names written in that book it would be entirely unrecognizable to any surviving speakers of those languages. Ever since around the Renaissance English orthography has been more focused on preserving etymology than phonetics. Try reading any text before that period and it becomes incomprehensible even though most of the words themselves aren't that obscure and the text is mostly legible when written with modern orthography.
> Besides, you can correctly pronounce about 90% of English phonetically. With German it's much more
This is what I'm talking about. Even you can't admit to being able to pronounce 100% of German words despite German orthography being constantly changed to fit pronounciation. It's akin to rehauling the codebase every year with some trendy framework, only to produce the same if not less functionality. Although at least you admit to not being able to pronounce certain words. I see far too many people obsessed with phonetic writing confidently mispronouncing every new word they come across.
> Good luck guessing even 5% of icons correctly that you've never seen before.
That's a strawman. Logography is not "icons". It's about making the writing system regular with morphemes not phonemes. Your rant about Steve Jobs and "icons" has nothing to do with any of that.
> phonetic writing fanatics
You made me laugh. But phonetic alphabet will win out again as people get sick of having no idea what the icons mean, and Steve Jobs' reality distortion field fades into history.
> you have to completely rehaul your orthography every couple of generations
I have no trouble reading books a couple hundred years old, like "Last of the Mohicans". Besides, you can correctly pronounce about 90% of English phonetically. With German it's much more.
Good luck guessing even 5% of icons correctly that you've never seen before.
You made me laugh. But phonetic alphabet will win out again as people get sick of having no idea what the icons mean, and Steve Jobs' reality distortion field fades into history.
> you have to completely rehaul your orthography every couple of generations
I have no trouble reading books a couple hundred years old, like "Last of the Mohicans". Besides, you can correctly pronounce about 90% of English phonetically. With German it's much more.
Good luck guessing even 5% of icons correctly that you've never seen before.
A bit pedantic but alphabets aren't the only kind of "advanced" writing system.
They may not be more "advanced" in a moral sense but there is certainly an evolutionary ordering here, in the sense that every known alphabet ultimately originated in some pictographic writing system, but pictographic writing systems don't originate from alphabets.
> They may not be more "advanced" in a moral sense
I fail to see what morality may have to do with it? A writing system is a tool, nothing else.
I fail to see what morality may have to do with it? A writing system is a tool, nothing else.
I can't think of anything more advanced than phonetic alphabets.
Icons are retarded, though :-) as they reset writing back 5000 years.
Icons are retarded, though :-) as they reset writing back 5000 years.
Phonetic alphabets tie the representation of information to human vocalization, which is only slightly more useful than tying it to human sight like pictographs.
Without launching into a diatribe on all the shortcomings of phonetic alphabets for representing spoken language (for example speakers of the same language can't even agree on the same set of phonemes to use, and they shift over time) there are plenty of examples I can think of, like musical notation, signal flow graphs, type system notation, circuit diagrams, etc, which notate extraordinarily complex and compounded information into terse representations without terrible ambiguity and plenty of flexibility just like alphabets. Without the shortcomings of human language itself. I'd suggest those systems, many of which have been iterated and improved, more "advanced" than the humble alphabets.
Without launching into a diatribe on all the shortcomings of phonetic alphabets for representing spoken language (for example speakers of the same language can't even agree on the same set of phonemes to use, and they shift over time) there are plenty of examples I can think of, like musical notation, signal flow graphs, type system notation, circuit diagrams, etc, which notate extraordinarily complex and compounded information into terse representations without terrible ambiguity and plenty of flexibility just like alphabets. Without the shortcomings of human language itself. I'd suggest those systems, many of which have been iterated and improved, more "advanced" than the humble alphabets.
> just like alphabets
Yes, there are many specialized notations for specialized purposes. None are useful as a representation of human language. Phonetic alphabets are specialized for human language, and have proved superior to any other notation for that purpose.
Yes, there are many specialized notations for specialized purposes. None are useful as a representation of human language. Phonetic alphabets are specialized for human language, and have proved superior to any other notation for that purpose.
Syllabaries and logographies are no less "advanced" than alphabets.
Plus unnecessarily ableist language aside, I'd expect people here of all places to understand that newer does not inherently equal better. You'll have to come up with a more sensible criticism of icons than "pictography is 5000 years old" :-)
Plus unnecessarily ableist language aside, I'd expect people here of all places to understand that newer does not inherently equal better. You'll have to come up with a more sensible criticism of icons than "pictography is 5000 years old" :-)
> You'll have to come up with a more sensible criticism of icons than "pictography is 5000 years old" :-)
I have on HN several times. To sum up:
1. dictionary is impossible
2. cannot keyboard it. forget about typewriters
3. impracticality of using pictures to represent verbs, adjectives, etc., anything but nouns with visual manifestations. (not that people don't try)
4. no past tense, no future tense
5. there are a million English words. Imagine a million icons. (You can't.)
6. copyright law means everyone invents their own unique icons
7. the overwhelming number of icons need a cheat sheet, because the picture isn't obvious
8. the graphic for icons tends to get simplified over the years (where have we seen that before?)
9. takes more paper to write the same text
10. slow to draw them by hand
11. hopelessness of OCR
12. takes years longer to learn than an alphabet
To sum up, please repost your comment using icons only.
I have on HN several times. To sum up:
1. dictionary is impossible
2. cannot keyboard it. forget about typewriters
3. impracticality of using pictures to represent verbs, adjectives, etc., anything but nouns with visual manifestations. (not that people don't try)
4. no past tense, no future tense
5. there are a million English words. Imagine a million icons. (You can't.)
6. copyright law means everyone invents their own unique icons
7. the overwhelming number of icons need a cheat sheet, because the picture isn't obvious
8. the graphic for icons tends to get simplified over the years (where have we seen that before?)
9. takes more paper to write the same text
10. slow to draw them by hand
11. hopelessness of OCR
12. takes years longer to learn than an alphabet
To sum up, please repost your comment using icons only.
> dictionary is impossible
I've got a Middle Egyptian dictionary in front of me right now.
> cannot keyboard it.
Manuel de Codage. I also use input methods for cuneiform. For a more modern example of this kind of thing, look at CJK input methods.
> impracticality of using pictures to represent verbs, adjectives, etc., anything but nouns with visual manifestations. (not that people don't try)
If you represent your language in pictures rather than try to make a special picture language, it is not that difficult.
> no past tense, no future tense
This is a feature of languages, not anything to do with the script. Look up Tense-Aspect-Mood if you are really interested.
For what it's worth, English has no future tense, but that has nothing to do with the Latin alphabet. It also doesn't prevent us from talking about actions in the future.
> there are a million English words. Imagine a million icons. (You can't.)
You can combine icons to form words.
> copyright law means everyone invents their own unique icons
I've read Egyptian hieroglyphic texts spanning two millennium. You get used to variation as the rule.
> the graphic for icons tends to get simplified over the years (where have we seen that before?)
Wasn't the case with Egyptian hieroglyphs, although arguably Hieratic exhibits this behavior.
> takes more paper to write the same text
In practice, a text in Egyptian hieroglyphs and its English translation are more or less the same length.
> hopelessness of OCR
It's harder, sure, but people are working on it.
> slow to draw them by hand
> takes years longer to learn than an alphabet
I'll give you those.
I've got a Middle Egyptian dictionary in front of me right now.
> cannot keyboard it.
Manuel de Codage. I also use input methods for cuneiform. For a more modern example of this kind of thing, look at CJK input methods.
> impracticality of using pictures to represent verbs, adjectives, etc., anything but nouns with visual manifestations. (not that people don't try)
If you represent your language in pictures rather than try to make a special picture language, it is not that difficult.
> no past tense, no future tense
This is a feature of languages, not anything to do with the script. Look up Tense-Aspect-Mood if you are really interested.
For what it's worth, English has no future tense, but that has nothing to do with the Latin alphabet. It also doesn't prevent us from talking about actions in the future.
> there are a million English words. Imagine a million icons. (You can't.)
You can combine icons to form words.
> copyright law means everyone invents their own unique icons
I've read Egyptian hieroglyphic texts spanning two millennium. You get used to variation as the rule.
> the graphic for icons tends to get simplified over the years (where have we seen that before?)
Wasn't the case with Egyptian hieroglyphs, although arguably Hieratic exhibits this behavior.
> takes more paper to write the same text
In practice, a text in Egyptian hieroglyphs and its English translation are more or less the same length.
> hopelessness of OCR
It's harder, sure, but people are working on it.
> slow to draw them by hand
> takes years longer to learn than an alphabet
I'll give you those.
I know little about Egyptian, but as I understand it it evolved to be phonetic, and much of our alphabet consists of highly simplified Egyptian hieroglyphs.
This I learned from a Nova show last year.
As for a dictionary, google says there are 700 Egyptian hieroglyphs. That's small enough that one can realistically look up one in the dictionary by exhaustive search. That doesn't work for English with a million words, and having no sort order is what I meant about no dictionary.
Any sort order for a picture of a duck and a picture of a house is going to be arbitrary. For English, one memorizes the (arbitrary) sort order of 26 letters, and then the rest requires no additional learning.
> You can combine icons to form words.
Indeed, and that is a crucial step along the way from a picture language to a phonetic alphabet!
> It also doesn't prevent us from talking about actions in the future.
What picture represents tomorrow?
> You get used to variation as the rule.
Apple will sue you if it looks anything like a trash can, not just a variation. Amusingly, many apps on the iphone use the word "delete". The icon empire is showing cracks!
This I learned from a Nova show last year.
As for a dictionary, google says there are 700 Egyptian hieroglyphs. That's small enough that one can realistically look up one in the dictionary by exhaustive search. That doesn't work for English with a million words, and having no sort order is what I meant about no dictionary.
Any sort order for a picture of a duck and a picture of a house is going to be arbitrary. For English, one memorizes the (arbitrary) sort order of 26 letters, and then the rest requires no additional learning.
> You can combine icons to form words.
Indeed, and that is a crucial step along the way from a picture language to a phonetic alphabet!
> It also doesn't prevent us from talking about actions in the future.
What picture represents tomorrow?
> You get used to variation as the rule.
Apple will sue you if it looks anything like a trash can, not just a variation. Amusingly, many apps on the iphone use the word "delete". The icon empire is showing cracks!
>> takes more paper to write the same text
> In practice, a text in Egyptian hieroglyphs and its English translation are more or less the same length.
I was careful in saying "more paper", not longer. The hieroglyphs take up more vertical space. While in Japan, I noticed a book written in Japanese characters was significantly larger than the same book written in Romanji. I was surprised, having assumed that the more information-dense Japanese characters would implicitly take less space.
I was careful in saying "more paper", not longer. The hieroglyphs take up more vertical space. While in Japan, I noticed a book written in Japanese characters was significantly larger than the same book written in Romanji. I was surprised, having assumed that the more information-dense Japanese characters would implicitly take less space.
A bunch of these depend on current technology being catered to alphabets and then #1 and #4 aren't even true for many real languages. What does #6 have to do with which ones are sufficient for communicating? #8 all languages change in many ways, how is that an argument against any of them?
What pictures would you select to make this sentence understandable by people who have not seen your icons before:
The only icon that makes sense is a black square with "Uber" written on it.
Tomorrow I am going to atone for my sins.
The only icon that makes sense is a black square with "Uber" written on it.
> Syllabaries and logographies are no less "advanced" than alphabets.
They're certainly much more complicated. But more advanced? That's not clear to me.
They're certainly much more complicated. But more advanced? That's not clear to me.
I recall reading that in the 300s AD, the Romans were using cartoons to give instructions to army troops, because they had too many barbarian troops who couldn't read. (Thus going back to step 1...)
Si Mario, so when the enemy gets close you unleash an uppercut like this: << stick man drawing >>
What's an example of #2? Aren't egyptian hieroglyphics also with phonetic sounds?
The hieroglyphics started out as pictures, and later evolved into being both pictures and sounds. Same with the Mayan script.
We really like pictures.
Highly recommend Thoth’s Pill [1] for a fun video on the subject.
Goes deep but keeps it relatively light.
Has the added bonus of going into Mesoamerican writing systems which are often underrepresented in these analyses.
[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=PdO3IP0Pro8
Goes deep but keeps it relatively light.
Has the added bonus of going into Mesoamerican writing systems which are often underrepresented in these analyses.
[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=PdO3IP0Pro8
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Brahmi is likely not from Aramaic, The Indus script is much older and is a lot more similar to Brahmi and is from the same region unlike Aramaic which is from a region 5000Kms away separated by massive deserts. it could also be other way around as Indus people were sea faring and their coins and stamps are found in Egypt and Mesopotamia
The other thing is that Brahmi is an abugida and not an aramaic abjad(alphabets with no vowels) so even influence seems unlikely. for people interested, abugida is like a mini algorithm where you can derive infinite symbols from a given set of symbols, you basically decode it back like an MP3 decoder while reading it. due to this nature, you don't need to learn spellings and there are no two ways of reading the same set of symbols, this also means that any text written in abugida 2000 years will be pronounced the same today, so unlike English which changes pronunciation every 100 or so years, An abugida reader can pronounce texts that were written 2000 years ago and know this is exactly how they were pronounced. This is a major reason why Indian youtube isn't filled with "how this was pronounced 200 years ago", would have been fun but unfortunately we are stuck with words and pronunciations from 2k years ago or more and they likely won't change for another 2000 years.
The other thing is that Brahmi is an abugida and not an aramaic abjad(alphabets with no vowels) so even influence seems unlikely. for people interested, abugida is like a mini algorithm where you can derive infinite symbols from a given set of symbols, you basically decode it back like an MP3 decoder while reading it. due to this nature, you don't need to learn spellings and there are no two ways of reading the same set of symbols, this also means that any text written in abugida 2000 years will be pronounced the same today, so unlike English which changes pronunciation every 100 or so years, An abugida reader can pronounce texts that were written 2000 years ago and know this is exactly how they were pronounced. This is a major reason why Indian youtube isn't filled with "how this was pronounced 200 years ago", would have been fun but unfortunately we are stuck with words and pronunciations from 2k years ago or more and they likely won't change for another 2000 years.
The PBS series NOVA had a great show on the alphabet and more generally went over how such things develop.
I think it was this episode:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/a-to-z-the-first-alphabe...
One of the things that was striking was that the process for coming up for an alphabet or pieces of it seem like they easily could have developed in multiple places at once, or come and gone here or there.
I think it was this episode:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/a-to-z-the-first-alphabe...
One of the things that was striking was that the process for coming up for an alphabet or pieces of it seem like they easily could have developed in multiple places at once, or come and gone here or there.
"the" alphabet being a western construct. Alphabets sui generis, were invented in lots of places to fill a need. I don't think the precolombian American or Asiatic cultures were waiting for ISO-LATIN1 to come down the pipe.
There is a very odd theory about speech and writing and intelligence which I can't quite capture, but its something around the idea that pre-literate people cannot be proven to have had any abstract concept of communication.
It gets shot down in flames pretty rapidly by burial remains which clearly indicate an organising principle (to bury) and belief in the afterlife: belief pre-supposes communication to shared belief. Neanderthal buried people with significant artifacts. Even the artifacts presuppose communication, you'd have to be able to communicate a desire for pretty-necklace-of-teeth-on-hair to somebody, for it to become widespread.
Or the Venus of Wuttenburg. It presupposes communication.
There is a very odd theory about speech and writing and intelligence which I can't quite capture, but its something around the idea that pre-literate people cannot be proven to have had any abstract concept of communication.
It gets shot down in flames pretty rapidly by burial remains which clearly indicate an organising principle (to bury) and belief in the afterlife: belief pre-supposes communication to shared belief. Neanderthal buried people with significant artifacts. Even the artifacts presuppose communication, you'd have to be able to communicate a desire for pretty-necklace-of-teeth-on-hair to somebody, for it to become widespread.
Or the Venus of Wuttenburg. It presupposes communication.
My understanding is that writing was invented several times independently (Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Americas, maybe Indus valley, maybe Easter island...).
It seems fully alphabetic writing was only invented once, and can be traced back the Mesopotamian one, which in turn might have been inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphs as described in the article?
It seems fully alphabetic writing was only invented once, and can be traced back the Mesopotamian one, which in turn might have been inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphs as described in the article?
The only "alphabets" (quotes because Ugaritic is an abjad) that can be traced back to Mesopotamia are the Ugaritic and old Persian alphabets. Both are independent simplifications of the syllabic cuneiform script into "alphabets." Both are linguistic dead ends, with no subsequent scripts arising from them.
The Phoencian "alphabet" is unrelated to Mesopotamian cuneiform. It likely represents another independent invention, but this time deriving from Egyptian hieroglyphs rather than cuneiform.
The Phoencian "alphabet" is unrelated to Mesopotamian cuneiform. It likely represents another independent invention, but this time deriving from Egyptian hieroglyphs rather than cuneiform.
Wow, thanks for that insight/correction.
Surely Korean Hangul is a counterexample? And I'm not even a linguist, there are probably more.
Hangul and Indian scripts are both independent of Aramaic in that they don’t share letters, but presumably Indian scripts were influenced by the idea of alphabets (since the Aramaic karoshti script also was used in India) and Hangul was influenced by how Indic scripts work (though the letter forms are different)
After listening to Dr. Robert M. Schoch on various podcasts, I'm starting to wonder if there could be, or have been, long-dead civilizations for which we have little-to-no evidence. This guy isn't a crackpot from some backwater university, this is a Yale-trained Ph.D.. His hypothesis that the Sphinx is actually 12,000 years old would imply that there have been much older civilizations which have died out.
Can you build something like the Sphinx without any form of written system at all? I don't honestly know, but my educated guess would be a resounding "no". If that's the case, it throws everything we know about "the Alphabet" up in the air.
What if our writing system is actually far, far older than we believe? I don't think its really "important", but its definitely fun to ponder.
Can you build something like the Sphinx without any form of written system at all? I don't honestly know, but my educated guess would be a resounding "no". If that's the case, it throws everything we know about "the Alphabet" up in the air.
What if our writing system is actually far, far older than we believe? I don't think its really "important", but its definitely fun to ponder.
There is some Harvard professor that believes that Oumuamua is an alien probe. Just being educated at or teaching at an ivy league schools doesn't make you immune from being a crackpot.
Well uncynically, a small number of crackpot theories end up being true. Science needs crackpots on some level to drive the truth forward.
Cynically, after having already achieved some level of legitimacy, having one or two big crackpot theories is a good way to drum up publicity/notability. If it turns out to be true, you would also be enormously respected and influential. So it’s incentivized by more than just discovering the truth
Cynically, after having already achieved some level of legitimacy, having one or two big crackpot theories is a good way to drum up publicity/notability. If it turns out to be true, you would also be enormously respected and influential. So it’s incentivized by more than just discovering the truth
He may be a PhD, but his theories are fringe and widely disputed. His dating of the Sphinx seems solely based on certain erosion patterns and are not supported by other evidence.
If an unknown long-dead civilization existed, I would think that their writing system and it’s influence would be one of the easiest ways to recognize them. Writing tends to be our best source of information on ancient civilizations. So it’s more plausible to me that if there’s unknown civilizations, then they lacked meaningful use of writing.
If an unknown long-dead civilization existed, I would think that their writing system and it’s influence would be one of the easiest ways to recognize them. Writing tends to be our best source of information on ancient civilizations. So it’s more plausible to me that if there’s unknown civilizations, then they lacked meaningful use of writing.
> He may be a PhD, but his theories are fringe and widely disputed.
I forgot that I wanted to mention this... I can't find the video on YouTube - its probably been lost to time, but there was a video where Michael Crichton was speaking to a crowd about scientific truth. I'm going to do my best to recall exactly what Dr. Crichton said, but it was something along the lines of, "The story of plate tectonics really is the story of a single person having it right and everyone else having it wrong." He's referring to Alfred Wegener, of course, who theorized continental drift back in 1912 or so. He was widely mocked and his theory totally rejected by - and it really isn't hyperbole to say this - every single geologist.
Sadly, Wegener died long before he would have his theory confirmed.
I forgot that I wanted to mention this... I can't find the video on YouTube - its probably been lost to time, but there was a video where Michael Crichton was speaking to a crowd about scientific truth. I'm going to do my best to recall exactly what Dr. Crichton said, but it was something along the lines of, "The story of plate tectonics really is the story of a single person having it right and everyone else having it wrong." He's referring to Alfred Wegener, of course, who theorized continental drift back in 1912 or so. He was widely mocked and his theory totally rejected by - and it really isn't hyperbole to say this - every single geologist.
Sadly, Wegener died long before he would have his theory confirmed.
> He was widely mocked and his theory totally rejected by - and it really isn't hyperbole to say this - every single geologist.
It is hyperbole. It is accurate to say the geological establishment was solidly against Wegener, but it was far from the case that all geologists were against Wegener; he had quite a few supporters (and even more in adjacent scientific communities such as meteorology and climatology). In fact it was a contemporary geologist supporter of the day (the oft-underappreciated Arthur Holmes) that eventually would supply the missing piece of the puzzle, namely the mechanism by which continents would drift.
In general I've never really liked the simplified story of continental drift that gets passed around because it ignores the really big stumbling block that Wegener was never able to get around which is that while he was very diligent about noticing similarities between continents he kept proposing wildly impractical mechanisms (e.g. tidal forces) that had implausible empirical predictions (Wegener's estimate of continental drift speed was eventually found to be off by several orders of magnitude). It implicitly peddles the story that Wegener's theory was essentially in complete agreement with empirical observations, but was just blindly rejected by the scientific establishment, which is not true in this case. (There are other more plausible cases where this has happened, but they are usually a tad more subtle.)
That is while Wegener's observations were first rate, his theory was deeply flawed, and not just in the way that "all theories are wrong" flawed; it had deep flaws that directly impacted its ability to make useful empirical predictions in the realm it claimed to be applicable. He proposed continental drift but never discovered plate tectonics.
Regardless, even though Wegener had an incomplete theory, his preponderance of other evidence is what kept his theory alive and eventually led to the acceptance of continental drift with the rise of plate tectonics in the 50s and 60s.
It is hyperbole. It is accurate to say the geological establishment was solidly against Wegener, but it was far from the case that all geologists were against Wegener; he had quite a few supporters (and even more in adjacent scientific communities such as meteorology and climatology). In fact it was a contemporary geologist supporter of the day (the oft-underappreciated Arthur Holmes) that eventually would supply the missing piece of the puzzle, namely the mechanism by which continents would drift.
In general I've never really liked the simplified story of continental drift that gets passed around because it ignores the really big stumbling block that Wegener was never able to get around which is that while he was very diligent about noticing similarities between continents he kept proposing wildly impractical mechanisms (e.g. tidal forces) that had implausible empirical predictions (Wegener's estimate of continental drift speed was eventually found to be off by several orders of magnitude). It implicitly peddles the story that Wegener's theory was essentially in complete agreement with empirical observations, but was just blindly rejected by the scientific establishment, which is not true in this case. (There are other more plausible cases where this has happened, but they are usually a tad more subtle.)
That is while Wegener's observations were first rate, his theory was deeply flawed, and not just in the way that "all theories are wrong" flawed; it had deep flaws that directly impacted its ability to make useful empirical predictions in the realm it claimed to be applicable. He proposed continental drift but never discovered plate tectonics.
Regardless, even though Wegener had an incomplete theory, his preponderance of other evidence is what kept his theory alive and eventually led to the acceptance of continental drift with the rise of plate tectonics in the 50s and 60s.
> If an unknown long-dead civilization existed, I would think that their writing system and it’s influence would be one of the easiest ways to recognize them. Writing tends to be our best source of information on ancient civilizations.
This only works if you actually find the things they wrote. If those works are still trapped in ice or ground somewhere, potentially thousands of feet or more underground, we may never find them. That's even assuming they used writing materials that would be preserved.
This only works if you actually find the things they wrote. If those works are still trapped in ice or ground somewhere, potentially thousands of feet or more underground, we may never find them. That's even assuming they used writing materials that would be preserved.
And their writings have to survive.
Look at Mesopotamia, where writing began with cuneiform impressions in clay. We've got lots of clay tablets because those survive well when buried. When Imperial Aramaic written on parchment began to supplant Akkadian cuneiform, we lose a lot of the written record. It's created an odd situation where the written documentation of the second millennium BCE is often better than the first millennium BCE.
Look at Mesopotamia, where writing began with cuneiform impressions in clay. We've got lots of clay tablets because those survive well when buried. When Imperial Aramaic written on parchment began to supplant Akkadian cuneiform, we lose a lot of the written record. It's created an odd situation where the written documentation of the second millennium BCE is often better than the first millennium BCE.
Wish I had time to refute your comment.
I know that traditionalist Hindus believe human civilization is much much much older than is generally thought in the West.
This doesn’t strike me as impossible. The glaciers would have obliterated all trace of any northern civilizations older than 12000 years for example.
Not to mention superstitious successor cultures could plausibly have destroyed artifacts as well.
This doesn’t strike me as impossible. The glaciers would have obliterated all trace of any northern civilizations older than 12000 years for example.
Not to mention superstitious successor cultures could plausibly have destroyed artifacts as well.
1) The only places that were completely glaciated during the LGM were Canada and a few bits of Northern Europe, which aren't the kinds of places you'd really expect to see a precursor "civilization".
2) You can still find stuff in previously glaciated areas, under reasonable conditions. I've found artifacts in probable pre-LGM deposits myself.
3) It's very difficult / borderline impossible for human hands to erase entire cultures. North Americans spent centuries eliminating as much native culture as they could, and it's still visible almost everywhere. We'd expect lots of indications to survive, from faunal population estimates, to sophisticated material culture, to simply drawings and other creative works, not to mention houses and infrastructure. These are all things we find for upper pleistocene groups, but not for hypothetical industrial precursors.
2) You can still find stuff in previously glaciated areas, under reasonable conditions. I've found artifacts in probable pre-LGM deposits myself.
3) It's very difficult / borderline impossible for human hands to erase entire cultures. North Americans spent centuries eliminating as much native culture as they could, and it's still visible almost everywhere. We'd expect lots of indications to survive, from faunal population estimates, to sophisticated material culture, to simply drawings and other creative works, not to mention houses and infrastructure. These are all things we find for upper pleistocene groups, but not for hypothetical industrial precursors.
> 3) ...
We're not talking about time scales of a few centuries though. We're talking about hypothetical civilizations potentially dating back to the evolution of modern homo sapiens, which is now believed to at least be over 300,000 years ago[1]. I honestly don't see how this could plausibly be falsified, since an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and an awful lot of entropy can happen in a hundred thousand years or more. I'm content to idly muse about it though.
[1] https://www.britannica.com/story/just-how-old-is-homo-sapien...
We're not talking about time scales of a few centuries though. We're talking about hypothetical civilizations potentially dating back to the evolution of modern homo sapiens, which is now believed to at least be over 300,000 years ago[1]. I honestly don't see how this could plausibly be falsified, since an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and an awful lot of entropy can happen in a hundred thousand years or more. I'm content to idly muse about it though.
[1] https://www.britannica.com/story/just-how-old-is-homo-sapien...
Are you suggesting that glaciers in Northern Europe eradicated material culture in Africa? This is very much at odds with your previous post.
A plausible location for a pre-Sumerian agricultural civilization, perhaps the only one, is in what is now the Black Sea.
It would of course be easy to have no evidence of this, just like we have very few artifacts of the Doggerlanders.
It would also provide a tidy explanation for the widespread myths of catastrophic floods.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis
It would of course be easy to have no evidence of this, just like we have very few artifacts of the Doggerlanders.
It would also provide a tidy explanation for the widespread myths of catastrophic floods.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis
I've never found that one particularly compelling. Flood myths are common across Africa, Asia, the Americas, and even Australia. There's isn't a reasonable argument to be made that all of these areas were in contact to share stories of this one event.
Depends how long dead we’re talking about. You might like this paper[1] which asks what evidence would be left if there had been a pre-human industrial civilisation.
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.03748
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.03748
I would totally love this paper. Thank you so much!
Huh, not sure what podcasts you listen to, as I only know him in the context of podcasts by historians that debunk pseudo-history.
He's definitely in the "crackpot" camp. Being generous, I'd say he carefully walks a tightrope between "ancient aliens" and real history. My impression is he does the former for $$$ (e.g. he's a co-author of "Lost Secrets of the Gods: [..] Ancient Astronauts" that makes extremely absurd claims to put it mildly), and as soon as he is critiqued by actual experts, he starts wildly walking back his claims or insist that he was misinterpreted or whatever to save face.
He's definitely in the "crackpot" camp. Being generous, I'd say he carefully walks a tightrope between "ancient aliens" and real history. My impression is he does the former for $$$ (e.g. he's a co-author of "Lost Secrets of the Gods: [..] Ancient Astronauts" that makes extremely absurd claims to put it mildly), and as soon as he is critiqued by actual experts, he starts wildly walking back his claims or insist that he was misinterpreted or whatever to save face.
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In history class the mentioned inventor was the city state of Ugarit on the coast. About 40 years later they were conquered by the Jews as a pagan city of the Canaanites. The writing system was adopted immediately and became the original writing system of the Hebrew language. Some time later it was adapted by the Greeks and the early Latins adapted it from the Greeks. Some few pre-Hebrew writing samples have survived to modern time but there aren’t many since its was wasn’t widespread and was present for only a small slice of time.
Stephen Wright:
"Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?"
"Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?"
Yes (and also because in the past letters were used as numbers).
This is a great video that I highly recommend: Thoth's pill - Animated history of writing
https://youtu.be/PdO3IP0Pro8
https://youtu.be/PdO3IP0Pro8
I have been led to believe that the Phoenician writing system was a syllabary, and that the Greeks made an alphabet out of it.
Are they using "alphabet" in an informal sense, in the article, to include syllabaries? Or am I misinformed?
And then, what are the hieroglyphs? Are they just talking about the specific set of letters we call our alphabet, and not the idea of an alphabet, which surely the Egyptians had? Unless that is itself a syllabary, and so doesn't count?
Are they using "alphabet" in an informal sense, in the article, to include syllabaries? Or am I misinformed?
And then, what are the hieroglyphs? Are they just talking about the specific set of letters we call our alphabet, and not the idea of an alphabet, which surely the Egyptians had? Unless that is itself a syllabary, and so doesn't count?
Phoenician writing system was an abjad [0], an alphabet where each symbol stands for consonant, vowels being implied or if symbols exist, they are optional. Where alphabet have vowels and consonants. Modern Arab, Hebrew and semitic languages have abjad.
Hieroglyph are pictograms/logographic scripts. One word for one logogram to represent one word.
They mostly talk about the fact that the Phoenician may have come from illiterate worker in the Canaan mines. Unable to learn hieroglyphs, they may have invented a simplified writing system leading to the Phoenician. The main interest is that the Phoenician abjad is not a construction from savant but by illiterate workers.
What do you mean by count? Various writing system exists in parallel, none really prevails on the other. Egyptians did not have an alphabet per se like Mandarin do not really have one either at least not really one that is reflected in the writing system.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet
Hieroglyph are pictograms/logographic scripts. One word for one logogram to represent one word.
They mostly talk about the fact that the Phoenician may have come from illiterate worker in the Canaan mines. Unable to learn hieroglyphs, they may have invented a simplified writing system leading to the Phoenician. The main interest is that the Phoenician abjad is not a construction from savant but by illiterate workers.
What do you mean by count? Various writing system exists in parallel, none really prevails on the other. Egyptians did not have an alphabet per se like Mandarin do not really have one either at least not really one that is reflected in the writing system.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet
Egyptian hieroglyphs are absolutely not pictograms. It was the belief that they were that prevented decrypting them for so long, until the Rosetta Stone was found.
Neither are Chinese characters, BTW. Chinese is a syllabary, but with a lot of redundancy -- 1200 syllables, lots more characters -- and arbitrary, historical rules about which variant for a syllable may be used for each word.
Amazingly (at least it amazes me), most Mandarin speakers think that other Chinese "dialects" are just different ways to pronounce Mandarin, where in fact they are as different from Mandarin as various European languages are from Latin.
Many even think of the characters as pictograms with complicated rules about sharing with homonyms. People who know more than one Sinitic language know better.
Neither are Chinese characters, BTW. Chinese is a syllabary, but with a lot of redundancy -- 1200 syllables, lots more characters -- and arbitrary, historical rules about which variant for a syllable may be used for each word.
Amazingly (at least it amazes me), most Mandarin speakers think that other Chinese "dialects" are just different ways to pronounce Mandarin, where in fact they are as different from Mandarin as various European languages are from Latin.
Many even think of the characters as pictograms with complicated rules about sharing with homonyms. People who know more than one Sinitic language know better.
I'm not an Egyptologist, but I can read hieroglyphs and can say with surety that Egyptian hieroglyphs are both pictographic AND alphabetic. It's actually an interesting system, where an alphabet (abjad, sort of) exists, but is not usually used in isolation from pictographic writing, nor can most Egyptian words be expressed entirely pictographically. For example, "Nile" is written "i t r w picture-of-water." "Sun" can be written as either a picture of the sun (with a single stroke added, indicating it is a logogram) or as "r ' picture-of-sun." The ' is the common transliteration for the arm hieroglyph, and my understanding is that it's likely pronounced something like the Arabic ayin.
Another crackpot theory by a non-native speaker. Chinese is logographic. You can't simultaneously claim that different dialects are seperate languages and also claim that they were secretly writing phonetically all this time. They wouldn't be mutually intelligible even in writing. Hand-waiving away a logographic system as a "syllabry with redundancy" is exactly the type of dumb semantic game I would expect from HackerNews. I guess you think a car is just a bicycle with more wheels and an engine too.
They are, in fact, not mutually intelligible, either phonetically or in writing.
That is what is so amazing about monolingual Mandarin speakers believing they should be.
That is what is so amazing about monolingual Mandarin speakers believing they should be.
Did you really just call somebody replying to you in English a "monolingual mandarin speaker". There have plenty of times where I have accidentally gone on Cantonese wikipedia and didn't notice until halfway through the article.
Compare the following from Cantonese Wikipedia:
粵文維基百科 係維基百科協作計劃嘅粵文版，由非牟利組織──維基媒體基金會喺2006年3月25號成立。
To "mandarin" Wikipedia
粵文維基百科是維基百科協作計劃的粵文版本，於2006年3月25日成立，由非營利組織──維基媒體基金會負責營運。
1. Save for 係, 嘅, and 喺, the former is perfectly valid Mandarin. Every other difference between the two texts are phrasing differences from then being written seperately by different people. If you did s/係/是/, s/喺/於/, and s/嘅/的/ and copy pasted the Cantonese version into regular Chinese Wikipedia nobody would notice.
2. Despite the fact that not a single word in those two excerpts would be pronounced the same, you can clearly see the same characters being used even if you can't read Chinese. This can not be the case if it were a "syllabary".
3. 係, 喺, and 嘅 are written differently not because they're pronounced different(so is every other character in the above excerpt) or even because they have a different meaning(they pretty much serve the same grammatical purpose as 是, 於, and 的), but because they have different etymologies and are different morphemes. This can only be the case if the writing system is logographic. It wouldn't be the case in either a logographic or ideographic system.
Mind you Cantonese Wikipedia is written exclusively by people like you who think Cantonese is a "language", and it's not some dying dialect(It's the second largest dialect and probably spoken by at least 50% of Chinese speakers who actually use Wikipedia and not some other wiki) like Scots so you can't claim that the people writing are just bad Cantonese speakers.
Compare the following from Cantonese Wikipedia:
粵文維基百科 係維基百科協作計劃嘅粵文版，由非牟利組織──維基媒體基金會喺2006年3月25號成立。
To "mandarin" Wikipedia
粵文維基百科是維基百科協作計劃的粵文版本，於2006年3月25日成立，由非營利組織──維基媒體基金會負責營運。
1. Save for 係, 嘅, and 喺, the former is perfectly valid Mandarin. Every other difference between the two texts are phrasing differences from then being written seperately by different people. If you did s/係/是/, s/喺/於/, and s/嘅/的/ and copy pasted the Cantonese version into regular Chinese Wikipedia nobody would notice.
2. Despite the fact that not a single word in those two excerpts would be pronounced the same, you can clearly see the same characters being used even if you can't read Chinese. This can not be the case if it were a "syllabary".
3. 係, 喺, and 嘅 are written differently not because they're pronounced different(so is every other character in the above excerpt) or even because they have a different meaning(they pretty much serve the same grammatical purpose as 是, 於, and 的), but because they have different etymologies and are different morphemes. This can only be the case if the writing system is logographic. It wouldn't be the case in either a logographic or ideographic system.
Mind you Cantonese Wikipedia is written exclusively by people like you who think Cantonese is a "language", and it's not some dying dialect(It's the second largest dialect and probably spoken by at least 50% of Chinese speakers who actually use Wikipedia and not some other wiki) like Scots so you can't claim that the people writing are just bad Cantonese speakers.
Comparing Wikipedia versions is not terribly useful, since formal written Chinese tends towards uniformity: previously 文言, now 普通话.
Spoken Chinese does not, and an accurate transcription of colloquial Cantonese is quite different from colloquial Mandarin: 係唔係佢哋嘅 vs 是不是他們的, and that's despite the grammar of the two sentences being identical (which is not normally the case either).
Spoken Chinese does not, and an accurate transcription of colloquial Cantonese is quite different from colloquial Mandarin: 係唔係佢哋嘅 vs 是不是他們的, and that's despite the grammar of the two sentences being identical (which is not normally the case either).
I was arguing against OP's case claim that Chinese is a "syllabary".
But even then your example is far more cherry picked than mine. Translated your phrase means "is it not theirs". It doesn't have any common nouns that aren't pronouns, adjectives, or even a verb that isn't is/是/係. You also managed to do something I couldn't even and provide an example where every word had the same exact grammatical meaning and were arranged in the same order in both examples. Really helps my point about logography more. If Chinese were ideographic and not logographic those words would be written the same. They're not because of differing etymologies.
The fact that you can only find colloquial examples that are significantly different is why it's a dialect. AAVE or Appalachian English are also near incomprehensible when spoken/written colloquially. Hell, I could even make the dumb arguement that liberals/conservatives speak a seperate language with something like your example. "was he Latino"/"were they latinx?"
Here I found the following sentence on a Cantonese bbs.
"推普滅粵係中國政府堅定不移的國策"
Perfectly valid Mandarin except for 係/是. You can't claim that a bbs comment complaining about the promotion of Mandarin, written on a forum dedicated to Cantonese of all things is formal language that's "tending towards" "mandarin".
But even then your example is far more cherry picked than mine. Translated your phrase means "is it not theirs". It doesn't have any common nouns that aren't pronouns, adjectives, or even a verb that isn't is/是/係. You also managed to do something I couldn't even and provide an example where every word had the same exact grammatical meaning and were arranged in the same order in both examples. Really helps my point about logography more. If Chinese were ideographic and not logographic those words would be written the same. They're not because of differing etymologies.
The fact that you can only find colloquial examples that are significantly different is why it's a dialect. AAVE or Appalachian English are also near incomprehensible when spoken/written colloquially. Hell, I could even make the dumb arguement that liberals/conservatives speak a seperate language with something like your example. "was he Latino"/"were they latinx?"
Here I found the following sentence on a Cantonese bbs.
"推普滅粵係中國政府堅定不移的國策"
Perfectly valid Mandarin except for 係/是. You can't claim that a bbs comment complaining about the promotion of Mandarin, written on a forum dedicated to Cantonese of all things is formal language that's "tending towards" "mandarin".
Indeed. In general, you don’t need to know how the language sounds in order to read; pictographic scripts make this even easier in a way. I can imagine (not necessarily true) that a text in Chinese could be read as if it was in English.
There is a lot of not-quite-correct information about Egyptian hieroglyphs in the replies to this comment. Hieroglyphs are actually a hybrid system, incorporating uniliteral glyphs (representing a single consonant sound), bi- and triliteral glyphs (representing two or three consonants), and logograms, representing a full word or concept. They also include "determinatives," which are basically helpful pictures at the end of a word that tells you something about the category of the word. Sometimes, a word incorporates all three types of symbol. For example, the word "Ra," if it refers to the sun god, might have the two consonants r and ' (which is close to a), followed by a picture of the sun, followed by the seated god determinative.
So I guess the real answer here is that the Egyptian writing system incorporates elements of alphabets and logographs, used together. Vowels were (mostly) not marked, though some "consonants" are treated as vowels in transliteration. I'm not entirely sure what the distinction is there.
So I guess the real answer here is that the Egyptian writing system incorporates elements of alphabets and logographs, used together. Vowels were (mostly) not marked, though some "consonants" are treated as vowels in transliteration. I'm not entirely sure what the distinction is there.
> I have been led to believe that the Phoenician writing system was a syllabary, and that the Greeks made an alphabet out of it.
My understanding is that it was an abjad, not a syllabary. An abjad has only consonants, not vowels. When a word is written, only its consonants get written, and the vowels are only implied. Hebrew and Arabic are abjads.
The Phoenician alphabet was preceded by the Ugaritic "alphabet", which was also an abjad.
A syllabary usually has many more symbols than an abjad or alphabet. If n denotes the number of phonemes in a language, then a syllabary has O(n^2) or O(n^3) symbols. In contrast, the Phoenician abjad has fewer symbols than even the English alphabet.
My understanding is that it was an abjad, not a syllabary. An abjad has only consonants, not vowels. When a word is written, only its consonants get written, and the vowels are only implied. Hebrew and Arabic are abjads.
The Phoenician alphabet was preceded by the Ugaritic "alphabet", which was also an abjad.
A syllabary usually has many more symbols than an abjad or alphabet. If n denotes the number of phonemes in a language, then a syllabary has O(n^2) or O(n^3) symbols. In contrast, the Phoenician abjad has fewer symbols than even the English alphabet.
Both the Ugaritic "alphabet" and the Phoenician "alphabet" must have been derived from an earlier abjad, from which we do not have any preserved example.
The earlier, unknown, abjad, must have been used to write the same 27 consonants as in the Ugaritic alphabet, but using graphic signs similar to those used by the 22-sign Phoenician alphabet, which resemble in form the Egyptian signs.
There is no doubt that the Egyptian writing system was the inspiration for the first abjad, because both the method of writing only the consonants and the direction of writing were inherited from the Egyptians.
In Ugarit, in order to write on earth tablets, like in Mesopotamia, the original graphic signs used for the 27 consonants were replaced with cuneiform signs.
On the other hand, the Phoenicians deleted 5 letters, because their language was simplified and the 5 deleted consonants were eventually pronounced identically with other 5 consonants. It is supposed that the Phoenician pronunciation was simplified so much because it was used as a lingua franca for commerce, by many people.
This reduction in the number of consonants created later problems for other Semitic people, e.g. Hebrews and Arabs, who still pronounced distinctly some of the consonants that were deleted from the Phoenician alphabet, so they had to invent diacritics to mark the missing consonants (e.g. shin and sin in Hebrew).
The earlier, unknown, abjad, must have been used to write the same 27 consonants as in the Ugaritic alphabet, but using graphic signs similar to those used by the 22-sign Phoenician alphabet, which resemble in form the Egyptian signs.
There is no doubt that the Egyptian writing system was the inspiration for the first abjad, because both the method of writing only the consonants and the direction of writing were inherited from the Egyptians.
In Ugarit, in order to write on earth tablets, like in Mesopotamia, the original graphic signs used for the 27 consonants were replaced with cuneiform signs.
On the other hand, the Phoenicians deleted 5 letters, because their language was simplified and the 5 deleted consonants were eventually pronounced identically with other 5 consonants. It is supposed that the Phoenician pronunciation was simplified so much because it was used as a lingua franca for commerce, by many people.
This reduction in the number of consonants created later problems for other Semitic people, e.g. Hebrews and Arabs, who still pronounced distinctly some of the consonants that were deleted from the Phoenician alphabet, so they had to invent diacritics to mark the missing consonants (e.g. shin and sin in Hebrew).
Was hoping a message like this would be more prominent here.
Although the Ugaritic and Phoenician alphabets come from the same area, they are discontinuous. However, the ordering being roughly the same, and following an earlier Egyptian ordering, is the big hint that they share at least inspirational descent from the same source.
Why that area of Lebanon? Byblos has been an Egyptian colony in that region for a very long time (~4600 years ago), ensuring continuous scribal presence. Scribes of that region are noted for intense multi-lingualism (as perusal of Ugaritic tablets is evidence of), so cross-pollination of scripts makes a lot of sense.
I haven't read through Goldwassers papers, but a lot of what they quote in the article seems to be unnecessary to explain the transmission of the abjad.
Although the Ugaritic and Phoenician alphabets come from the same area, they are discontinuous. However, the ordering being roughly the same, and following an earlier Egyptian ordering, is the big hint that they share at least inspirational descent from the same source.
Why that area of Lebanon? Byblos has been an Egyptian colony in that region for a very long time (~4600 years ago), ensuring continuous scribal presence. Scribes of that region are noted for intense multi-lingualism (as perusal of Ugaritic tablets is evidence of), so cross-pollination of scripts makes a lot of sense.
I haven't read through Goldwassers papers, but a lot of what they quote in the article seems to be unnecessary to explain the transmission of the abjad.
The orderings of the 27 consonants of the Ugaritic alphabet and of the 22 consonants of the Phoenician alphabet are identical, not just roughly the same.
The difference is just that 5 consonants are missing from the Phoenician alphabet in random places: between gamma and delta, between kappa and lambda, between mu and nu, between nu and xi, and between sigma and tau.
It is known with which other consonants the deleted consonants were merged. For example Ugaritic had "s" and unvoiced "th" like in "thin", while Phoenician pronounced both as "s" and kept only the sigma letter.
(I have used the names of the letters as used by the Greeks, as those are more familiar for most people)
The Ugaritic alphabet also used for certain purposes 3 supplementary signs, invented later, and which were added after the original 27 consonants.
The difference is just that 5 consonants are missing from the Phoenician alphabet in random places: between gamma and delta, between kappa and lambda, between mu and nu, between nu and xi, and between sigma and tau.
It is known with which other consonants the deleted consonants were merged. For example Ugaritic had "s" and unvoiced "th" like in "thin", while Phoenician pronounced both as "s" and kept only the sigma letter.
(I have used the names of the letters as used by the Greeks, as those are more familiar for most people)
The Ugaritic alphabet also used for certain purposes 3 supplementary signs, invented later, and which were added after the original 27 consonants.
Abjad, yeah. One story I heard was that Greeks since greeks lacked unvoiced velar/glottal stops as meaningful phonemes, they heard aleph as just a vowel, thus creating an actual alphabet.
I've no idea how well that story is supported, but abusing new technology for purposes it was never intended to fill does seem like an eternal human fact.
I've no idea how well that story is supported, but abusing new technology for purposes it was never intended to fill does seem like an eternal human fact.
Wikipedia claims that matres lectionis appeared in the Phoenician system only rather late [0], and so I would presume after transmission to the Greeks. Consequently, could the Phoenician system really be called an abjad at the time that the Greeks borrowed it? See also [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mater_lectionis [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet#Greek-deri...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mater_lectionis [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet#Greek-deri...
A pure abjad doesn't have matres lectionis.
Yes, my mistake, and unfortunately your reply came an instant before I could delete my post to avoid wasting everyone’s time here.
What surprises me is that the Egyptians didn't invent an alphabet. They had 24 hieroglyphs (uniliteral hieroglyphs) that each represented a single phoneme. They were this close to inventing the alphabet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transliteration_of_Ancient_Egy...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transliteration_of_Ancient_Egy...
I wonder how much of that was about firmly keeping the ownership of 'writing' in the hands of the elite? Writing in that way would have been extremely costly, and so is another use of wealth in a vastly wealthy country?
Possible, the scribes of Egypt were reasonably powerful and powerful classes do like to protect their own interests.
But not necessary. Japanese invented syllabaries twice, and has added them to the writing system, rather than ditching the logographic system they learned from the Chinese.
The Hangul were rejected for a few hundred years before Korea settled on actually using them. Writing is sticky.
But not necessary. Japanese invented syllabaries twice, and has added them to the writing system, rather than ditching the logographic system they learned from the Chinese.
The Hangul were rejected for a few hundred years before Korea settled on actually using them. Writing is sticky.
I'm more interested in finding out how we know certain combinations of letters (e.g. words) means] specific things. Who conveyed this info to the first person or persons who invented the alphabet?
related book on the alphabet by rosen
https://www.npr.org/2015/02/07/384108640/alphabetical-tells-...
It was Tegumai Bopsulai and his daughter, Taffimai Metallumai, as I recall.
dave_sid(2)
Historical authority Rudyard Kipling describes it well in his "Just So" stories, "The First Letter" and "How the Alphabet was Made".
Not all connections are super well established, but a lot of them are. It really drives home the point that writing was invented independently only a handful of times. The letters you’re currently reading are direct descendants of Egyptian hieroglyphs!