8 ms·

The Egyptians were evolving from picture to phonetic alphabets, because picture languages don't work very well. (What's the picture for "slow"?) In modern time

The Egyptians were evolving from picture to phonetic alphabets, because picture languages don't work very well. (What's the picture for "slow"?) In modern times, our alphabet is devolving into a picture language, due to a disorder called "iconitis".

downboots 1y ago
๑ï
- maxbond 1y ago
  Those darn Lombards! I'm going to stick it to them in this marginalia.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  If you believe people who have no idea what they're saying, it's "慢". I like yours though. In the actual development of writing, it isn't likely that a picture of a snail would be used to represent a semantically related word. Even in the earliest systems, where you could use a picture of a snail to represent the word "snail", it would be limited to (a) the word "snail", or (b) some other word that was pronounced identically. This is how it worked in Egyptian, Akkadian, and Chinese. For example, 慢 is the Mandarin word for "slow", and it's pronounced "màn". There is a logic to its appearance: the component on the left, 忄, represents that it is a mental state† (I'm not sure why this was felt to be true of "fast" and "slow", but it was), and the component on the right, 曼, just so happens to be pronounced "màn". (Most sound indications in Chinese characters are no longer that exact. They used to match better, but many centuries of language change followed. 丁 is dīng; 打 is dǎ.) † Some more typical characters in the same category: 情 "feeling" (n.), 怕 "fear" (v.), 懂 "understand" (v.), 恨 "hate" (v.).
nradov 1y ago
In a few decades we'll probably see emojis showing up in formal writing like textbooks, news articles, and scholarly journals. Our descendants will find it odd and quaint to read English texts without them.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  No, they won't. Nobody will remember 10,000 emojis. I used emojis for a while on phone texting. I eventually realized they were juvenile and stupid, and stopped. Save the artwork for wonderful things like the illustrations in the Pooh books.
RataNova 1y ago
Maybe we're not devolving so much as looping
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
nuc1e0n 1y ago
The Latin alphabet that we use is itself an evolution of Heiroglyphics. The linked site also says we have no knowledge of how the ancient Egyptians reached their mathematical conclusions. That's not true. The Rhind mathematical papyrus documents worked mathematical problems. Matt Parker of the youtube channel "stand up maths" did a collaboration video recently with Ilona Regulski of the British Museum about it.

downboots 1y ago

๑ï

maxbond 1y ago
Those darn Lombards! I'm going to stick it to them in this marginalia.
thaumasiotes 1y ago
If you believe people who have no idea what they're saying, it's "慢". I like yours though. In the actual development of writing, it isn't likely that a picture of a snail would be used to represent a semantically related word. Even in the earliest systems, where you could use a picture of a snail to represent the word "snail", it would be limited to (a) the word "snail", or (b) some other word that was pronounced identically. This is how it worked in Egyptian, Akkadian, and Chinese. For example, 慢 is the Mandarin word for "slow", and it's pronounced "màn". There is a logic to its appearance: the component on the left, 忄, represents that it is a mental state† (I'm not sure why this was felt to be true of "fast" and "slow", but it was), and the component on the right, 曼, just so happens to be pronounced "màn". (Most sound indications in Chinese characters are no longer that exact. They used to match better, but many centuries of language change followed. 丁 is dīng; 打 is dǎ.) † Some more typical characters in the same category: 情 "feeling" (n.), 怕 "fear" (v.), 懂 "understand" (v.), 恨 "hate" (v.).

nradov 1y ago

In a few decades we'll probably see emojis showing up in formal writing like textbooks, news articles, and scholarly journals. Our descendants will find it odd and quaint to read English texts without them.

WalterBright 1y ago
No, they won't. Nobody will remember 10,000 emojis. I used emojis for a while on phone texting. I eventually realized they were juvenile and stupid, and stopped. Save the artwork for wonderful things like the illustrations in the Pooh books.

RataNova 1y ago

Maybe we're not devolving so much as looping

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

nuc1e0n 1y ago

The Latin alphabet that we use is itself an evolution of Heiroglyphics. The linked site also says we have no knowledge of how the ancient Egyptians reached their mathematical conclusions. That's not true. The Rhind mathematical papyrus documents worked mathematical problems. Matt Parker of the youtube channel "stand up maths" did a collaboration video recently with Ilona Regulski of the British Museum about it.