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> But phonographic writing didn't take long to develop. But it did. It took around 1500 years from the first writing systems to fully phonetic systems. And we

> But phonographic writing didn't take long to develop. But it did. It took around 1500 years from the first writing systems to fully phonetic systems. And we still have Chinese characters even now, or the Tibetan writing system. For some reason, writing systems tend to stay stuck on mixed logographic and phonetic systems.

thaumasiotes 1y ago
The modern Chinese writing system is fully phonetic, just with extremely complex spelling. There is no pretense that characters represent ideas or words. They represent syllables. Phonetic use of the characters was immediate. The go-to example here is 來, which depicts a stalk of wheat. It is the spelling of the verb "come", and the verb is spelled that way because the character for "wheat" was borrowed with no alterations to represent its own pronunciation, which was shared with the verb.
- cyberax 1y ago
  I speak Chinese :) It's a mixed system with about 2 millennia of legacy. It started as logographic, then it got into phono-semantic compounds, with detours into the written-only official language (like Latin), and now it's messy mix of everything. There are true logographs (休，林，森), true phonosemantic compounds, and plenty purely phonetic characters that have no meaning by themselves ("bound morphemes").
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    > now it's messy mix of everything. There are true logographs Don't confuse the origin of the system with what the system is now. Using your example, what do you see as the difference between the "logographs" 森 and 林? Neither can be a logograph, because neither one represents a word. But even if that weren't the case, on the assumption that they are simply pictures representing concepts, how would you know which one was which? What does it mean, to you, that the word "forest" must be written 森林 and not 森? > and [there are] plenty purely phonetic characters that have no meaning by themselves ("bound morphemes"). ...yes. 森 and 林 both belong to that category. But you've specifically contrasted them with it. I can't tell what you're thinking of. Characters can be classified by origin, so that 森 is "从林从木", 切 is "从刀七声", and 下 is "指事". You seem to be reaching for this, but "bound morpheme" is a classification of the current use of the linguistic element, not of the origin of the way it's spelled.
    - kragen 1y ago
      图样图森破
      - thaumasiotes 1y ago
        I'm not sure I follow you, but it seems worth noting that those five characters are the transcription of an English phrase. (In this case, "森" is just the first half of the word "simple".)
        kragen 1y ago
        In this case used purely for its phonetic value, with no semantic content, so it's hard to call it logographic.
OskarS 1y ago
There's always a sliding scale between "proto-writing" and fully developed writing systems, but just using symbols phonetically instead of semantically happens much faster than that. The very archaic forms of proto-cuneiform is from about 3400 BCE (though things like clay tokens are much older). It, like virtually all writing systems in the world, developed into a true writing system by use of the "rebus principle", where symbols came to acquire different meanings based on phonetics in the same way as in a rebus. Like, in English, if you had a symbol for "female sheep" (a "ewe"), you could start to use it to signify the word "you", even though there's no semantic connection. The earliest evidence for this in cuneiform is from around 3200-3000 BCE. There is a famous tablet where the symbol for "reed" is used to represent the word "reimburse", because they're both pronounced like gi. By a few hundred years later, cuneiform was a fully fledged phonetic writing system.
prewett 1y ago
My understanding of the history of Chinese writing is that it kept trying to go phonetic, but each time they prevented it, because the writing had to be read across an empire with multiple languages. Even so, something like 20% of the characters are quasi-phonetic, with the radical giving the topic and the rest of the character giving the approximate pronunciation, so "the word for {a plant|a thing of metal|a person|etc} that is sounds similar to X". When the Japanese imported it, they used the characters much more phonetically. They used the whole word when that worked, but the characters got assigned to the Japanese pronunciation of the word, as well as the pronunciation from the pieces of other words where that character appeared, as well as the Chinese pronunciations. Then six hundred years or so later they imported them again, by which point the characters had evolved in Chinese but not in Japanese. So its sort of phonetic, but it's a complete mess.
- kragen 1y ago
  That's mostly right. Not 20%, more like 90%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification#Phono-semantic_compounds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classificati... In Japanese at this point most kanji have an onyomi (the sound of the Chinese word, which has been adopted into Chinese the way Latin words like "adopt" are adopted into English) and at least one kunyomi (the sound of a synonymous Japanese word not derived from Chinese). This does add difficulty but it is somewhat compensated for by the smaller repertoire of characters used in Japanese. A lot of the most common Japanese words, all loanwords from languages like English, and all the inflectional suffixes are normally written with one of two purely phonetic syllabaries.
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    I would take issue with >> When the Japanese imported it, they used the characters much more phonetically. Japanese kanji are much less phonetic than Chinese hanzi. For hanzi, you can ask "how is this character read?", and it's a simple question with a simple answer, because that question is the basis of the writing system. Kanji are assigned all kinds of different readings on the theory that what really counts is the semantics. For example... >> They used the whole word when that worked Not even in the oldest Chinese writings do you see one character representing a multisyllabic word. Identifying characters with words rather than syllables is an innovation on the part of the Japanese. Tangentially, you mentioned that the vast majority of characters are phono-semantic compounds. I've been watching some youtube videos in which Japanese people are presented with kanji of varying levels of obscurity and asked to speculate on their pronunciation. Without fail, when they don't know the answer, the interviewees speculate that the two major components of the character both contribute to its meaning. And that always surprises me because a two-meaningful-components construction is so rare in the character system. Almost all characters aren't constructed from two meaningful elements, and I would have thought the Japanese would be familiar with that fact even though they can't understand the phonetic hints. Do you think this is more of a case of them not knowing how characters are formed ("ignorance"), or more of a case of them speculating on the meaning of each component purely because they don't have the ability to speculate about the phonetics ("searching under the lamppost")? [Particularly where the obscure kanji are part of an obscure phrase borrowed from Chinese, speculating about the phonetics would be helpful to the problem, but I'm assuming most Japanese just plain don't know what kinds of sounds a Chinese phonetic component might be hinting at.]

thaumasiotes 1y ago

The modern Chinese writing system is fully phonetic, just with extremely complex spelling. There is no pretense that characters represent ideas or words. They represent syllables. Phonetic use of the characters was immediate. The go-to example here is 來, which depicts a stalk of wheat. It is the spelling of the verb "come", and the verb is spelled that way because the character for "wheat" was borrowed with no alterations to represent its own pronunciation, which was shared with the verb.

cyberax 1y ago
I speak Chinese :) It's a mixed system with about 2 millennia of legacy. It started as logographic, then it got into phono-semantic compounds, with detours into the written-only official language (like Latin), and now it's messy mix of everything. There are true logographs (休，林，森), true phonosemantic compounds, and plenty purely phonetic characters that have no meaning by themselves ("bound morphemes").
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  > now it's messy mix of everything. There are true logographs Don't confuse the origin of the system with what the system is now. Using your example, what do you see as the difference between the "logographs" 森 and 林? Neither can be a logograph, because neither one represents a word. But even if that weren't the case, on the assumption that they are simply pictures representing concepts, how would you know which one was which? What does it mean, to you, that the word "forest" must be written 森林 and not 森? > and [there are] plenty purely phonetic characters that have no meaning by themselves ("bound morphemes"). ...yes. 森 and 林 both belong to that category. But you've specifically contrasted them with it. I can't tell what you're thinking of. Characters can be classified by origin, so that 森 is "从林从木", 切 is "从刀七声", and 下 is "指事". You seem to be reaching for this, but "bound morpheme" is a classification of the current use of the linguistic element, not of the origin of the way it's spelled.
  - kragen 1y ago
    图样图森破
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      I'm not sure I follow you, but it seems worth noting that those five characters are the transcription of an English phrase. (In this case, "森" is just the first half of the word "simple".)
      - kragen 1y ago
        In this case used purely for its phonetic value, with no semantic content, so it's hard to call it logographic.

OskarS 1y ago

There's always a sliding scale between "proto-writing" and fully developed writing systems, but just using symbols phonetically instead of semantically happens much faster than that. The very archaic forms of proto-cuneiform is from about 3400 BCE (though things like clay tokens are much older). It, like virtually all writing systems in the world, developed into a true writing system by use of the "rebus principle", where symbols came to acquire different meanings based on phonetics in the same way as in a rebus. Like, in English, if you had a symbol for "female sheep" (a "ewe"), you could start to use it to signify the word "you", even though there's no semantic connection. The earliest evidence for this in cuneiform is from around 3200-3000 BCE. There is a famous tablet where the symbol for "reed" is used to represent the word "reimburse", because they're both pronounced like gi. By a few hundred years later, cuneiform was a fully fledged phonetic writing system.

prewett 1y ago

My understanding of the history of Chinese writing is that it kept trying to go phonetic, but each time they prevented it, because the writing had to be read across an empire with multiple languages. Even so, something like 20% of the characters are quasi-phonetic, with the radical giving the topic and the rest of the character giving the approximate pronunciation, so "the word for {a plant|a thing of metal|a person|etc} that is sounds similar to X". When the Japanese imported it, they used the characters much more phonetically. They used the whole word when that worked, but the characters got assigned to the Japanese pronunciation of the word, as well as the pronunciation from the pieces of other words where that character appeared, as well as the Chinese pronunciations. Then six hundred years or so later they imported them again, by which point the characters had evolved in Chinese but not in Japanese. So its sort of phonetic, but it's a complete mess.

kragen 1y ago
That's mostly right. Not 20%, more like 90%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification#Phono-semantic_compounds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classificati... In Japanese at this point most kanji have an onyomi (the sound of the Chinese word, which has been adopted into Chinese the way Latin words like "adopt" are adopted into English) and at least one kunyomi (the sound of a synonymous Japanese word not derived from Chinese). This does add difficulty but it is somewhat compensated for by the smaller repertoire of characters used in Japanese. A lot of the most common Japanese words, all loanwords from languages like English, and all the inflectional suffixes are normally written with one of two purely phonetic syllabaries.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  I would take issue with >> When the Japanese imported it, they used the characters much more phonetically. Japanese kanji are much less phonetic than Chinese hanzi. For hanzi, you can ask "how is this character read?", and it's a simple question with a simple answer, because that question is the basis of the writing system. Kanji are assigned all kinds of different readings on the theory that what really counts is the semantics. For example... >> They used the whole word when that worked Not even in the oldest Chinese writings do you see one character representing a multisyllabic word. Identifying characters with words rather than syllables is an innovation on the part of the Japanese. Tangentially, you mentioned that the vast majority of characters are phono-semantic compounds. I've been watching some youtube videos in which Japanese people are presented with kanji of varying levels of obscurity and asked to speculate on their pronunciation. Without fail, when they don't know the answer, the interviewees speculate that the two major components of the character both contribute to its meaning. And that always surprises me because a two-meaningful-components construction is so rare in the character system. Almost all characters aren't constructed from two meaningful elements, and I would have thought the Japanese would be familiar with that fact even though they can't understand the phonetic hints. Do you think this is more of a case of them not knowing how characters are formed ("ignorance"), or more of a case of them speculating on the meaning of each component purely because they don't have the ability to speculate about the phonetics ("searching under the lamppost")? [Particularly where the obscure kanji are part of an obscure phrase borrowed from Chinese, speculating about the phonetics would be helpful to the problem, but I'm assuming most Japanese just plain don't know what kinds of sounds a Chinese phonetic component might be hinting at.]