How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs (2010) | Hacker News Reader

How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs (2010)

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Fyi, the animation showing evolution of Latin alphabet: http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~rfradkin/latin.html

That was neat. Thanks for posting it.

Egyptian hieroglyphs included a group of 24 signs that were read phonetically, representing single letters (specifically, consonants) matching the first sound of the word symbolised by the pictogram (the "rebus" principle) [1].

In fact, most Egyptian hieroglyphs had multiple readings, the same sign standing alternatively for a single sound (letter or syllable), a single word, or some more or less broad concept. Other cultures also had similar systems, or used syllabaries or partial alphabets (abjads [2] and abugidas [3]), or a liberal mix of several systems.

In other words, the idea of alphabetic writing (representing atomic sounds rather than entire words or phrases) did occur more than once. It's only a very small hop from a syllabary to a full alphabet, anyway.

What is unique to the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet discussed in the OP then, is probably the fact that it used the phonetic reading as its sole system, probably for the reasons detailed in the OP: it was used by officially "illiterate" people who didn't have the opportunity to learn (or use!) a more complex script.

So, I guess, their big innovation was not phonetic writing per se, but the fact that they distilled it down to the cheapest, dirtiest, fastest-to-learn bits that could be used by people with very few resources.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transliteration_of_Ancient_Egy...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abugida

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjad

Not sure what the author means by "THE alphabet". We have substantial evidence now that the Vedas were written in 2500 BC or earlier, using Devanagari - an advanced script / alphabet system used even today. So surely, "THE" alphabet was invented much before that - somewhere around 3500 BC I would surmise.

I think the author makes the distinction between an alphabet sensu strictu and an alphasyllabary, or abugida. This is also how wikipedia classes Devanagari [1]:

  Devanagari ... also called Nagari is an abugida (alphasyllabary) alphabet of India and Nepal.

The distinction is kind of subtle and like I say in another comment, the idea of using symbols to represent the shortest possible phonemes in a language was not invented by the inventors of the Proto-Sinaitic script. The OP might be exaggerating this point a bit.

I'm also not totally convinced that learning a complex writing system like an ideographic script is such a big deal. After all, if all you want is a way to write down your name or a short prayer (longer prayers would be prohibitive by having to carve them on stone during either work, or breaks from work, anyway) you can always do that with ideograms. You can always learn only the few symbols that say what you want to say; you don't have to learn the entire script!

Come to that, there's no real way to tell whether the people who wrote their names in the Proto-Sinaitic script actually knew how to read the entire alphabet, short as it was. Maybe they only knew the characters for their name, and then a handful of other characters outside it, perhaps the ones used in the names of popular deities or their friends etc.

I mean, sure, that proto-alphabet had an easy mnemonic, but that doesn't mean that everyone who knew how to write their name in it had actually made the (small, but not nonexistent) effort to commit the entire thing to memory. It probably takes kids today a good few months to learn to read and write using an alphabet even with all the leisure and support of modern education systems. I can't see the miners of Serabit having an easier time at it.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari

The Vedas and the oldest, the Rig Veda, were composed as oral poetry and memorized. We don't have the first evidence of writing in India until inscriptions using the Brahmi script from the edicts of Ashoka around 300 BC. Even then, it would be centuries before large bodies of spoken word such as the Vedas and the Pali Canon were committed to writing.

Of course there's the the Indus Valley script, but theres no real evidence to suggest that it was used to write significant and lengthy works. Especially since the IVC collapse would have predated the migration of the Aryans. But there actually doesn't need to be a common writing system, since we know for a fact it originated independently in two places, the Sumerians and the Maya. It's less clear cut (no ocean separating) but it's likely the Oracle Bone script in China was independent too.

Few people in this day & age believe in the "migration of the Aryans" theory! I think it has been thoroughly debunked and has been recognized as a dishonest attempt by Christian / British historians to distort history & show that nothing original was ever developed in the Indian subcontinent.

The reason we cannot see these concepts in today's Hebrew letters is because the modern Hebrew script has been adopted from Aramaic script used in Persia. Most learned Jews were taken into captivity by Babylon, which was then captured by Persia. And the schools which Jews established in Babylon thrived, and most likely adopted the Persian script when writing.

If you want to see the original script, look at a Samaritan Pentateuch.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritan_alphabet

Interesting that he thinks the people who invented the canaanite alphabet were illiterate. There was at least one alphabet invented in the modern era by an illiterate:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary

(Although that someone who invents an alphabet can be considered to be illiterate is interesting)

I also wonder how many of the people who adapted the Chinese hanzi to their local languages were actually literate in Chinese.

Ironically, we're reverting to hieroglyphs (icons and emoji).

My favorite example:

The Rosetta mission as told in emojis

https://twitter.com/paulcoxon/status/781785896513314816

Related: Animation about the history of writing (47 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdO3IP0Pro8

It makes sense symbols inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphics but use your own pictures for objects you know of in your own language.

The lack of written vowels would also held simplify learning.

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