Written Language: Pictures to the AlphabetClaudetta EstesRDG 511

“Written language develops when oral language is insufficient for meeting language needs of a society”

~Ken Goodman

Why Written Language?

Even societies that appear to have no written language use symbols or graphics in order to communicate. Written language becomes necessary, however when societies and their cultures spread out and develop in complex ways. (Goodman) When a culture needs a written language they simply invent it in order to communicate.

Communication in Society

Around 3000 B.C.E. language was found Land lies along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This area today is now modern Iraq. Early Mesopotamian writing was found in trade, business and farm records. Mesopotamia traded regularly with ancient Egyptian and ancient Indian civilizations, thus having the idea of writing spread into other cultures.

MesopotamiaThe first written language?

20,000 years ago. These drawings and paintings developed later into "pictograms". These paintings depicted literal portrayals of various aspects of life. Pictograms gradually developed into "ideograms”. They represented ideas rather than objects. Ideograms might include a picture of the sun to represent heat, light and daytime. Ideograms became more abstract and eventually began to represent the sounds of spoken language

Pictograms and ideogramsPictures that evolved..

Pictograms in Mainstream CultureHospital, Airport…

A form of pictograms can also be found in mainstream cultures as road signs, on public bathroom doors, and used to represent a place to eat, to sleep, to fill your gas tank, or make a phone call. These symbols are internationally recognizable, producing meaning that might not be expressible in spoken language.

Cuneiform WritingMesopotamia’s Written LanguageThis literally meant "wedged shape". They pressed a wedged shape object in clay tablets. Each of these abstract symbols represented a single word.

The Egyptians had developed a writing system similar to the Sumerians called "hieroglyphics". Hieroglyphics were also pictographic.

It came to represent syllables, and the sounds of language.

Around 1500 B.C. the Phoenicians of the eastern shores of the Mediterranean adopted the Egyptian hieroglyphics and developed them into a set of 22 consonant vowel pairs.

This syllabic system was later used by the Greeks.

HieroglyphicsEgypt's Language

Logographic SystemWriting for different cultures – Three Writing Systems

Logographic system is a word writing system. An idea of this system is single characters represent single words. The problem with this system is that thousands of symbols must be memorized. In recent years the Chinese government has adopted a spelling system using the Roman alphabet, called "Pinyin".Pinyin can be used to teach the intensive logographic system. It is used to help foreigners, often found on street signs and other forms of instruction.

A syllabic system is a syllable writing system that is used in Japan. They have two systems. One, called "kana", is made up of two 46 characters syllabaries, "katakana" and "hiragana”. The first represents syllables and the second represents inflections.The Japanese language can be represented with kana. All words can be represented in kana, and many of those can also be represented in kanji. Other syllabic writing systems are used by the Cherokee people. There writing system was developed relatively recently in 1821.

Syllabic SystemWriting for different cultures – Three Writing Systems

The alphabetic system is a sound writing system common to most modern cultures. Though alphabetic systems can appear quite different from each other, they all have a common letter to sound correspondence. Most alphabetic systems do not represent every sound with a different letter. The United States uses an alphabetic system to produce written language.

Alphabetic SystemWriting for different cultures – Three Writing Systems

“Language is a living, dynamic organism” (Goodman). We us all forms of communication in order to communicate. Language is the most important idea in reading and making sense of our world.

ConclusionWritten Language Importance