The Oriental Institute is hosting a magnificent exhibit about the origins of writing. If you've not been to Chicago before, now's the time to visit us! Shu and I can't wait to see the exhibit. Here is a link to the article..

quote:

An exhibit opening Sept. 27 at the Oriental Institute pulls together information that has emerged in the last 25 years showing how the written word was invented independently at four places around the world: in Egypt, Mesopotamia, China and in what today is southern Mexico and Guatemala.

That sounds awesome!

In the morphology of peevology facebook group, zmježd quoted Plato, who wrote about an early complaint about written language. Thamus, god-king of Egypt complains to Theuth, the inventor of writing:
"O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a parental love of your own children, have been lead to attribute them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust of the external written characters and not remember of themselves."

Most interesting quote. I wonder, however, if the oral tradition ended with writing or with printing presses? The latter seems the more likely to me.

Reviving a thread

Shu and I finally got to the writing exhibit at the Oriental Institute today, and, yes, goofy, it was awesome. I learned a lot, such as the word boustrophedon, meaning reading from right to left and then left to right. I suppose it isn't new to a lot of you here, though.

I also bought a book, "Writing Systems," by Geoffrey Sampson, which I am looking forward to reading. John Justeson, from Language summarizes it as "...a readable, non-technical discussion of the nature of scripts as linguistically structured systems...." I just hope it's a little less technical than Saussure.

Sounds like a great book. When you finish it I expect you to be able to identify the script in my avatar image.

Oh...I just thought it was an abstract design. I have a lot to learn, don't I?