6 ms·

Not quite. Writing was independently invented about three or four times: • Sumerian cuneiform was undisputedly the first writing system to be invented. • Egyp

by bradrn 6y ago

Not quite. Writing was independently invented about three or four times: • Sumerian cuneiform was undisputedly the first writing system to be invented. • Egyptian hieroglyphics was probably made with knowledge of cuneiform, but could have been an independent invention. All Western writing systems (Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin etc.) are ultimately descended from hieroglyphics. • All native writing systems of India, SE Asia and Oceania are descended from Brāhmī. I believe the current theory is that Brāhmī was descended from Aramaic script and hence also from hieroglyphics, but there are disputes. • Chinese characters (hànzì) were an independent invention. Descended from them are Japanese hanja and kana, Vietnamese Chữ Nôm, Sawndip and some others. • The writing systems of Mesoamerica (most notably that for Mayan) are of course a completely independent invention. And then of course there are Hangeul, Cherokee, CAS etc., which were scripts consciously designed under the influence of other scripts. These tend to have rather unique structures compared to other writing systems of the world.

deleted 6y ago
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cedex12 6y ago
I think the parent is maybe referring to something else, that I also heard in a documentary: that all writing systems with a "reduced" alphabet descend from the same source. I guess the japanese case is a counterexample to this, but the idea was, iirc, that writing systems appeared at different places, and followed this pattern: * At first, people just draw representations of whatever they want to refer to. * These evolve to symbols. * Then, using the "rébus principle", you use the _sounds_ of each symbol to be able to represent things for which you had no symbols. This is the step where, say, the chinese and mayan systems are. * Then, and this is the "reduced" part I'm referring to: you simply forget the original meaning of your symbol, and only take it for a basic sound. If I understand correctly, this happened when some people wanted to adapt hieroglyphs to their (spoken) language: they dropped the hieroglyph as symbolic representations, and only used them for their sound. The documentary I watched seemed to imply that all alphabets with this property (symbols have no meaning) descend from this moment. It does sound a bit much. I may be totally misunderstanding it all, so any correction is more than welcome!
- bradrn 6y ago
  > Then, and this is the "reduced" part I'm referring to: you simply forget the original meaning of your symbol, and only take it for a basic sound. This is usually known as the ‘acrophonic principle’, and indeed, all alphabetic scripts — and most of the other ones as well — are descended from Proto-Sinaitic, the first script to utilise the acrophonic principle.
  - cedex12 6y ago
    Since you seem to know about this stuff: * It seemed to me from that same documentary that pretty much all writing systems appeared independently from spoken language: In a sense, written and spoken appeared independently, and then the Rébus principle, and then this "acrophonic principle" made the writing system, and thus "language", sort of subdued to the spoken language. Is that true? It would intuitively seem to me that a written language is easier to organize into clean rules and principles, contrasted to a spoken language. Did "putting things in writing" help formalize such languages, or did it have no impact? * Any good reference on these questions? Thanks!
    - bradrn 6y ago
      > It seemed to me from that same documentary that pretty much all writing systems appeared independently from spoken language: In a sense, written and spoken appeared independently, and then the Rébus principle, and then this "acrophonic principle" made the writing system, and thus "language", sort of subdued to the spoken language. Is that true? I must admit to being confused as to what you’re asking here. What exactly do you mean by ‘appearing independently’, and writing systems being ‘subdued to the spoken language’? > Did "putting things in writing" help formalize such languages, or did it have no impact? Hmm… not sure. I suppose it depends on what you mean by ‘formalise’, and even then this isn’t really an area I’ve looked into. However, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the presence of a writing system assists in the preservation of archaic forms (not that this affects the rate of language change, mind you). > Any good reference on these questions? For writing systems in general, a good place to start is Omniglot (https://www.omniglot.com/ https://www.omniglot.com/), but I can’t think of anything more relevant to your specific questions.
jcranmer 6y ago
What we call alphabets, as distinguished from abigudas, abjads, and syllabaries, almost all derived directly or indirectly from Greek. Abigudas and abjads also almost all derived from Phoenician/Egyptian (from which Greek also derived). The independent systems of Mesopotamia, China, and Mesoamerica all ended up no further than syllabaries. What Indus Valley Script is isn't clear. So while writing was indisputably multiply invented, the alphabet (i.e., representing all phonemes instead of syllables) itself appears to have been independently invented only once (excluding perhaps Hangul, which is somewhat closer to a rigorously-construct syllabary than an alphabet). If you're unfamiliar with terminology: * Alphabet = Every phoneme (consonant and vowel) has a distinct glyph. Examples include Latin, Greek, Cyrillic. * Abiguda = Every consonant has a distinct glyph. Vowels are indicated by systematic modification of the glyph. Examples include Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, Devanagari, Ethiopian. * Abjad = Every consonant has a distinct glyph. Vowels are indicated by (optional) diacritic marks. Examples include Arabic, Hebrew. * Syllabary = Every syllable (or, more often, Consonant-Vowel cluster) has a distinct glyph. Examples include Japanese kana, Mayan. * Logograph = Every word (/morpheme) has a distinct glyph. Examples include Chinese, although Japanese and Mayan also include logographic components. Arguably modern English with emoji. ;-)
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  Hangul is definitely an alphabet. The only reason one might consider it a syllabary according to these definitions is that the way the letters are arranged into a block form syllabic glyphs, but that’s more similar to writing direction (e.g. English left to right).
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  "Alphabet = Every phoneme (consonant and vowel) has a distinct glyph." That's not really true of the Latin alphabet as used in English, is it? "f" and "ph" could be pronounced the same, as in "fox" and "phone". "c" and "k" could be pronounced the same, as in "cow" and "kiss". So a multiple glyphs could represent the same phoneme.
  - jcranmer 6y ago
sauropterygia 6y ago
Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese Characters (as used in the Korean language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja Are you sure you did not mean "Japanese kanji and kana", or "Japanese hiragana and katakana"? Also on the Chinese family are Khitan large and small script, and the Jurchen large and small script, where some of the characters seem to be phonograms grouped in syllabic blocks as in Korean Hangul!
- bradrn 6y ago
  Sorry, yes, I did indeed mean ‘kanji’, not ‘hanja’! (Pity I can’t edit anymore…) > Also on the Chinese family are Khitan large and small script, and the Jurchen large and small script, where some of the characters seem to be phonograms grouped in syllabic blocks as in Korean Hangul! Also the deeply weird Tangut (the only rGyalrongic language with an indigenous writing system). I didn’t know that about Jurchen, though; I’ll have to look into it.

by bradrn 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

cedex12 6y ago

I think the parent is maybe referring to something else, that I also heard in a documentary: that all writing systems with a "reduced" alphabet descend from the same source. I guess the japanese case is a counterexample to this, but the idea was, iirc, that writing systems appeared at different places, and followed this pattern: * At first, people just draw representations of whatever they want to refer to. * These evolve to symbols. * Then, using the "rébus principle", you use the _sounds_ of each symbol to be able to represent things for which you had no symbols. This is the step where, say, the chinese and mayan systems are. * Then, and this is the "reduced" part I'm referring to: you simply forget the original meaning of your symbol, and only take it for a basic sound. If I understand correctly, this happened when some people wanted to adapt hieroglyphs to their (spoken) language: they dropped the hieroglyph as symbolic representations, and only used them for their sound. The documentary I watched seemed to imply that all alphabets with this property (symbols have no meaning) descend from this moment. It does sound a bit much. I may be totally misunderstanding it all, so any correction is more than welcome!

bradrn 6y ago
> Then, and this is the "reduced" part I'm referring to: you simply forget the original meaning of your symbol, and only take it for a basic sound. This is usually known as the ‘acrophonic principle’, and indeed, all alphabetic scripts — and most of the other ones as well — are descended from Proto-Sinaitic, the first script to utilise the acrophonic principle.
- cedex12 6y ago
  Since you seem to know about this stuff: * It seemed to me from that same documentary that pretty much all writing systems appeared independently from spoken language: In a sense, written and spoken appeared independently, and then the Rébus principle, and then this "acrophonic principle" made the writing system, and thus "language", sort of subdued to the spoken language. Is that true? It would intuitively seem to me that a written language is easier to organize into clean rules and principles, contrasted to a spoken language. Did "putting things in writing" help formalize such languages, or did it have no impact? * Any good reference on these questions? Thanks!
  - bradrn 6y ago
    > It seemed to me from that same documentary that pretty much all writing systems appeared independently from spoken language: In a sense, written and spoken appeared independently, and then the Rébus principle, and then this "acrophonic principle" made the writing system, and thus "language", sort of subdued to the spoken language. Is that true? I must admit to being confused as to what you’re asking here. What exactly do you mean by ‘appearing independently’, and writing systems being ‘subdued to the spoken language’? > Did "putting things in writing" help formalize such languages, or did it have no impact? Hmm… not sure. I suppose it depends on what you mean by ‘formalise’, and even then this isn’t really an area I’ve looked into. However, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the presence of a writing system assists in the preservation of archaic forms (not that this affects the rate of language change, mind you). > Any good reference on these questions? For writing systems in general, a good place to start is Omniglot (https://www.omniglot.com/ https://www.omniglot.com/), but I can’t think of anything more relevant to your specific questions.

jcranmer 6y ago

What we call alphabets, as distinguished from abigudas, abjads, and syllabaries, almost all derived directly or indirectly from Greek. Abigudas and abjads also almost all derived from Phoenician/Egyptian (from which Greek also derived). The independent systems of Mesopotamia, China, and Mesoamerica all ended up no further than syllabaries. What Indus Valley Script is isn't clear. So while writing was indisputably multiply invented, the alphabet (i.e., representing all phonemes instead of syllables) itself appears to have been independently invented only once (excluding perhaps Hangul, which is somewhat closer to a rigorously-construct syllabary than an alphabet). If you're unfamiliar with terminology: * Alphabet = Every phoneme (consonant and vowel) has a distinct glyph. Examples include Latin, Greek, Cyrillic. * Abiguda = Every consonant has a distinct glyph. Vowels are indicated by systematic modification of the glyph. Examples include Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, Devanagari, Ethiopian. * Abjad = Every consonant has a distinct glyph. Vowels are indicated by (optional) diacritic marks. Examples include Arabic, Hebrew. * Syllabary = Every syllable (or, more often, Consonant-Vowel cluster) has a distinct glyph. Examples include Japanese kana, Mayan. * Logograph = Every word (/morpheme) has a distinct glyph. Examples include Chinese, although Japanese and Mayan also include logographic components. Arguably modern English with emoji. ;-)

bobthepanda 6y ago
Hangul is definitely an alphabet. The only reason one might consider it a syllabary according to these definitions is that the way the letters are arranged into a block form syllabic glyphs, but that’s more similar to writing direction (e.g. English left to right).
pmoriarty 6y ago
"Alphabet = Every phoneme (consonant and vowel) has a distinct glyph." That's not really true of the Latin alphabet as used in English, is it? "f" and "ph" could be pronounced the same, as in "fox" and "phone". "c" and "k" could be pronounced the same, as in "cow" and "kiss". So a multiple glyphs could represent the same phoneme.
- jcranmer 6y ago

sauropterygia 6y ago

Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese Characters (as used in the Korean language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja Are you sure you did not mean "Japanese kanji and kana", or "Japanese hiragana and katakana"? Also on the Chinese family are Khitan large and small script, and the Jurchen large and small script, where some of the characters seem to be phonograms grouped in syllabic blocks as in Korean Hangul!

bradrn 6y ago
Sorry, yes, I did indeed mean ‘kanji’, not ‘hanja’! (Pity I can’t edit anymore…) > Also on the Chinese family are Khitan large and small script, and the Jurchen large and small script, where some of the characters seem to be phonograms grouped in syllabic blocks as in Korean Hangul! Also the deeply weird Tangut (the only rGyalrongic language with an indigenous writing system). I didn’t know that about Jurchen, though; I’ll have to look into it.