So to start, thanks, Jenna, for giving me the jump-off point for this post! It was while I was researching the Mayan language that I discovered all this information.
Once upon a time, about 1900 BC in fact, the first known consonantal alphabet was in usage. It was called Proto-Sinaitic Script.
One example of genuine Proto-Sinaitic
This alphabet coexisted with Egyptian, and in fact took its symbols from the Egyptian hieroglyphs. This was either due to an Egyptian conquest of Sinai, or a more friendly spread of literacy through shared trade and workers, though it is uncertain which one (or both) was more influential (source). Oddly, though Egypt had a phonetic alphabet, as I mentioned in this post, the Proto-Sinaitic Script didn't make use of these symbols to represent the sounds of their own language. Instead, seemingly at random, they chose signs from the hieroglyphs and assigned them values.
This newly formed alphabet pre-dated even Phoenician, which came into being about 1100 BC. However, the two are very closely connected. In fact, Proto-Sinaitic is the Alphabetic "grandfather" of most alphabets that are still used in our modern world! (Source)
Look at this chart I found, showing the evolution of the alphabet over many years from Proto-Sinaitic to Greek:
I dunno about you guys, but I think this is unbelievably cool. This finally gives a purpose to all the random lines, curves and shapes that make up our alphabet - coming from the original Egyptian, they once had an intrinsic meaning! It was simply lost over time.
My favorite was the example for the letter M:
Water. It clearly begins as a series of wavy lines, to illustrate water, and then changes with time: the symbols came to be more simply represented, in order to make them easier to write or carve.
This made my life make more sense; now we can know a little better why on earth it is that we use seemingly random shapes to represent certain sounds.
Of course, English isn't very consistent with the whole "spell it like it's said" idea.
But then, that's a part of what makes it so awesome.
(If you're really interested in random facts about Egyptian written language in particular, view this website page. It has a lot of great information on other writing systems as well.)
Click here to travel forward in time to my next post, which isn't even written yet!
Wow Sam, that future post is coming along great! Anyways, I was wondering if the Proto-Siniatic could be used to write down things like stories or the words that you speak or if they were just used as symbols to represent things. This made me think of the hobos during the Great Depression, so I just made a short little post (just so I could add pictures to my comment). That really is mind-blowing, though, to see the "evolution" of writing and how letters that look at least somewhat familiar came from symbols that don't really make sense to us.
ReplyDeleteThat is so interesting how the symbol for an object has developed in the letters that we use today. I had no idea! It shows how much we rely on the past to develop things for the future. I am going to look into the history of shorthand more to see how those specific symbols were chosen for the words/letters they represent. Perhaps they came about in a similar way.
ReplyDeleteTHis relates back to my old post about how the Anglo Saxons relied on the Latin Alphabet for their development of Old English. To answer Scott's question, I think that shorthand probably did come about in a similar way, most letters and alphabets have their origins in symbols from previous civilizations and peoples
ReplyDeleteFinally! An Alphabet with purpose! Haha, thanks Sam! I guess you could have always thought something like 'M' as in mountain, but this makes so much more sense. It's pretty easy to see how even our alphabets can evolve. If water was represented with a squiggly symbol that resembled waves, the alphabet, especially in English, has gotten a lot more complex. I just think it's incredible that our language, which consists of so many thousands of words, can be represented with just 26 symbols! (What's really funny is that with all I've written so far, I haven't even used all 26 letters, even though there's only 26!)Complex? Haha, simply so!
ReplyDeleteThe evolution of written letters that you showed reminded me of one of Rudyard Kipling's "Just So Stories" that gives explanations for how different letters came to mean what they do. That's just a story, so it's cool to see that maybe there's some truth to it.
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