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
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.
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.
Icons are retarded, though :-) as they reset writing back 5000 years.
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" :-)
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.
Tomorrow I am going to atone for my sins.
The only icon that makes sense is a black square with "Uber" written on it.
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.
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!
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.
They're certainly much more complicated. But more advanced? That's not clear to me.
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.
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.
I fail to see what morality may have to do with it? A writing system is a tool, nothing else.