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   Author  Topic: How does a written language die?  (Read 1200 times)
rhinoceros
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How does a written language die?
« on: 2003-09-01 17:59:15 »
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<quote>
"The sociological and cultural dimension is crucial," Houston said. "Successful systems don't have these prohibitions. Once there's this perception that the writing is only for this function or that function, script death is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy."

On the surface, the disappearances of the three ancient scripts appear to have little in common.
<end quote>

However...



Scholars Perform Autopsy on Ancient Writing Systems

Cause of Death Related to Lack Of Accessibility

Source: Washington Post
Author: Guy Gugliotta
Dated: 2003-08-25


When a system of writing begins to die, people probably don't even notice at first. Maybe the culture that spawned it loses its vitality, and the script decays along with it. Maybe the scribes or priests decide that most ordinary people aren't able to learn it, so they don't teach it.

Or a new, simpler system may show up -- an alphabet, perhaps -- that can be easily learned by aggressive upstarts who don't speak the old language and don't care to learn its fancy pictographic forms.

Or perhaps invaders take over. They decide the old language is an inconvenience, the old culture is mumbo jumbo and the script that serves it is subversive. The scribes are shunned, discredited and, if they persist, obliterated.

In the first study of its kind, three experts in the study of written language have described the common characteristics that caused three famous scripts -- ancient Egyptian, Middle Eastern cuneiform and pre-Columbian Mayan -- to disappear.

"Thousands of languages have come and gone, and we've studied that process for years," said Brigham Young University archaeologist Stephen D. Houston, the study's Maya specialist. "But throughout history, maybe 100 writing systems have ever existed. We should know more about why they disappear."

The collaboration among Houston, University of Cambridge Egyptologist John Baines and Assyriologist Jerrold S. Cooper of Johns Hopkins University began at a meeting that Houston hosted earlier this year to discuss the origins of writing. What resulted was "Last Writing," an essay on script death published recently in the British journal Comparative Studies in Society and History. Its basic conclusion: Writing systems die when those who use them restrict access to them.

"The sociological and cultural dimension is crucial," Houston said. "Successful systems don't have these prohibitions. Once there's this perception that the writing is only for this function or that function, script death is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy."

On the surface, the disappearances of the three ancient scripts appear to have little in common.

Both Egyptian and cuneiform survived for 4,000 years, a millennium longer than the Latin alphabet that Westerners use today, and both died in the early centuries of the Christian era after long declines. Mayan, by contrast, lasted about 2,000 years and died relatively abruptly around 1600 because of active repression by Spanish conquerors.

Both Mayan and Egyptian served only one language, while cuneiform, invented by ancient Sumerians around 3500 B.C., was adopted by many different Mesopotamian peoples who spoke Semitic and Indo-European languages and other tongues completely unrelated to Sumerian.

Mayan and cuneiform took one basic form, while Egyptian was actually four related but different systems. Hieroglyphics, the lovely script that adorns the pyramids and monuments of the pharaohs, was the most elaborate.

Mayan never had a real competitor, while cuneiform eventually succumbed to rough-and-ready local Semitic alphabets -- principally Aramaic -- that better served the region. Egyptian endured centuries of onslaught from the Greek and Latin of its invaders before finally giving way.

Despite the differences, all three writing systems fell victim to some of the same mistakes: "There's discrimination against everyday use, so that while religion may help a script survive, it does not extend its reach," Baines said. "And when the people [or conquerors] begin to identify the religion and its script as something heretical or dangerous, there's nobody left to protect it."

For ancient languages, the margin for survival was always narrow: "We're so used to universal literacy that we forget that the whole Mayan [literate] population may have been a third of the number of people who go to a college football game today," said Pennsylvania State University anthropologist David Webster, a Maya expert. "I don't think most of us focus on just how limited literacy was in a lot of these societies."

For centuries Egyptian script thrived because it served a relatively homogeneous people who lived on the edge of the known world unchallenged by outside forces, Baines said. This changed with conquests first by Alexander the Great in the 4th century B.C. and later by the Romans.

Greek became Egypt's official language during the Hellenistic period, and the Romans discriminated against indigenous nobles by taxing those who didn't speak it: "This was a body blow," said Cambridge's Baines.

But the Romans, who saw themselves as the heirs of the pharaohs, invested heavily in temple building, which helped hieroglyphics survive and even thrive, he added. It wasn't until polytheism went into disrepute with the strengthening of Christianity that Egyptian script lost its anchor and finally died.

In Mesopotamia, cuneiform benefited for about 2,000 years by being the only script in the region. Even as Sumerian civilization began to decline, the Semitic Akkadians who replaced them adopted their writing system around 2500 B.C. Other peoples followed.

Cuneiform continued into the first millennium B.C. as the script for ritual, administration and commerce, but later tablets show notes in the margin written in the more recently developed Aramaic alphabet, an ominous sign.

Besides that, said Johns Hopkins' Cooper, "the fact that nobody spoke the [Sumerian] language [by about 1400 B.C.] put the script in jeopardy." Finally, he added, "the texts depended on a certain kind of belief system that was changing, while the texts weren't."

The script began to disappear, lingering in temples and then disappearing altogether after a last flowering among Chaldean astronomers who probably used it, Cooper said, because cuneiform's numerical system is based on 60, offering a much less cumbersome mathematical mechanism than anything else that existed at the time.

The fate of Mayan script differed from cuneiform or Egyptian, because it appears to have suffered a largely self-inflicted wound. Long before the Spanish conquest, use of the elaborate glyphs that had flourished for 1,500 years was sharply restricted, Penn State's Webster said, probably because they "were so closely identified with rulers whose rule had been discredited" by wars and corruption.

By the time the Spaniards set out to systematically destroy the remains of Mayan civilization, the script may have needed little more than a coup de grace.




« Last Edit: 2003-09-01 18:09:16 by rhinoceros » Report to moderator   Logged
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Re:How does a written language die?
« Reply #1 on: 2003-09-01 20:21:59 »
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Interesting rhino. I started to read this just after a convo with Jonesey and Mermaid on IRC about how much i missed reading and writing in Latin.

I think Mermaid posted a link about how a classical eductation, where you learn Latin helped to encourage parts of the brain to be more precise and logical about things. I'll try and find it.........

Nope no link, you'd have to ask Mermaid about it

here's the log with minor edits.

* Kid-A misses Latin
<Mermaid> you can always learn latin if you have the inclination and dedication
<Mermaid> its just a language
<Mermaid> and a very dead one
<Kid-A> i did, but i just miss it
<Mermaid> thats a good site..bookmarked!
<Mermaid> what do you mean..you miss it?
<Kid-A> it was one of my favourite subjects to learn for some reason, i just like the language it felt very simple
<Mermaid> http://classics.mit.edu/Sophocles/oedipus.html > the sophocles version of oedipus rex
<Mermaid> i read a book on homeschooling the classical way
<Mermaid> the author suggests that children should be taught latin from the third grade onwards
<Mermaid> latin, it seems, trains the mind to think in an orderly fashion
<Jonesey> former VP dan quayle lamented the demise of latin, except for latin america
<Jonesey> more than..sanskrit?
<Mermaid> and the latin trained mind becomes accustomed to paying attention to details and such
<Mermaid> sanskrit is not very popular in this part of the world
<Mermaid> the germans were terribly fascinated by it tho
<Jonesey> well, anyone who is interested in philology has to be fascinated by one of the earliest attested indo-european languages
<Mermaid> the max muellar bhavan in madras had several german-sanskrit courses...
<Mermaid> sanskrit should be made compulsary in india, imo...if there has to be classical education..
<Jonesey> i imagine it would be if there were the wealth to support it. right now literacy is still a battle, let alone classical education
<Mermaid> of course, there is no use for sanskrit in the western world..i read somewhere that its the best language for programming..
<Jonesey> well there's "no use" for latin either, hence its vanishing from schools by and large
<Jonesey> I think it's a bit of a stretch to argue that sanskrit knowledge makes ppl better programmers
<Mermaid> of course, the cheerful exchange on sanskrit in cov came to a crashing end when hermit decided that some indian guy from mauritius was trying to convert cov to eastern religious mumbo jumbo
<Jonesey> much more useful to have good logic and discrete math training
<Mermaid> i tried my best..but there is only so much you can do when hermit has taken up a cause...he is like a train on cocaine
<Jonesey> hm weird
<Jonesey> hehehe
<Jonesey> cov=religious mumbo jumbo to me
<Mermaid> i dont know, Jo..i read it..
<Jonesey> not sure sanskrit can possibly exacerbate that
<Mermaid> i didnt study sanskrit ..altho' i am more than familiar with it for someone who never studied it formally
<Mermaid> my husband, on the other hand, studied sanskrit formally..he seems to be a fan of it

I'd certainly be interested in learning old or dead languages if it could help improve my mind, and even if it doesnt, I'd still know a new language, i'd have nobody to talk to, but i'd know it nonetheless....

Kid
« Last Edit: 2003-09-01 20:31:43 by Kid-A » Report to moderator   Logged

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Re:How does a written language die?
« Reply #2 on: 2003-09-18 18:54:59 »
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Q: How does a WRITTEN language die?

A: Nobody buys the dictionary.

next question......

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Re:How does a written language die?
« Reply #3 on: 2004-02-22 20:07:03 »
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