Media, Information and Technoculture 2000F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Orality, Protestantism, Indo-European Languages
22 Dec 2016
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Document Summary
Origins of writing: sumeria (present day iraq and syria) 3200bce mesopotamia: 5000 years of writing within human existence. Linked to spread of the economy: accountancy. Pictographic script: pictures to represent object in the society, works best with obvious physical objects, therefore several limitations. Only makes sense if everyone understands the pictures. Local proximity: pictographic symbol used for phonetic value (the sound it makes) Schematic writing (cuneiform) - branch into more abstract concepts: abstract concepts. Objects and ideas: pictography to formal patterns, ideographic and syllabic symbols, non-alphabetic, written on clay and baked, put a personal stamp (like a signature) 3000 bce egypt: hieroglyphics (hieratic/demotic scripts) Economic changes happening in different parts of the world, the need of writing arises. First: phoenicians: 1500 bce, more efficient and easier to learn, 22 letters, only consonants, no vowels, limitations: easy to confuse similar words. Expands to hebrew, latin, arabic, cyrillic, bengali: indo-europeans (romance, germanic, slavic, indonesian, works great with printing press because its standardized.
