abecedaria: Susan McCarthy’s blog on writing systems
abecedaria is a new blog by Susan E. McCarthy, who left a comment on my blog on Vivian Cook’s book.
Suzanne McCarthy Says:
June 13th, 2005 at 12:21 am eI do know what DeFrancis would say. All true writing systems are sound-based, and some differentiate for meaning as well.
Here is what Cook said about Chinese.
“Chinese has taken this to the extreme by having a single written form unconnected to speech that Chinese can read all over the world, regardless of what kind of Chinese they speak.”http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/Writings/Shorts/SpellingStrop.htm
Someone should tell him that all writing systems record speech but they are either segmental or syllabic.
I have just started a blog about writing systems at
http://abecedaria.blogspot.com
While I am sympathetic to de Francis and hence Susan’s view — I believe that’s a fair statement about contemporary writing systems — Susan’s definition seems too narrow. Roy Harris’ (1986) book "The Origin of Writing" (my brief note) forcefully argued that the Phonecians intended to represent the "word" in essense, rather than its various inflected forms. And that’s why they ignored the vowels and represented the consonantal root only. It’s not segmental in its true sense, as most authors in this field agree.
Japanese Kanji is an example of writing at a larger-than-syllable level. On the other hand, it also illustrates the point that such a system would be incomplete without a sound-based system such as the kana syllabaries.
Disagreements aside, I am very impressed with Susan’s blog. I’ve long been interested in how alphabetic orthographies are taught in the history. Susan’s latest post Battledores and Hornbooks links to two pictures of early teaching tools:
Battledores and hornbooks are two of the teaching aids of early literacy that have been used over the centuries. They present the alphabet in linear fashion, then a table of syllables and a religious text.
Hornbooks date from the 1400’s to the late 1700’s and were made of a small wooden paddle, on which was glued a sheet of paper, covered with a layer of cattle horn which had been soaked and prepared to become flattened and pliant. An alphabet, a short selection of syllables and often the Lord’s Prayer were commonly printed on hornbooks.
Battledores, popular in the 1800’s, were made of stiff folded cardboard with a greater surface area, so they could also contain pictures. Many of these also portrayed the alphabet, an array of syllables and the Lord’s Prayer. However, some came in the form of an illustrated alphabet book.
Cannot resist inserting a picture of an old Horn Book:
A Horn Book in Tuer, Andrew J. History of the Horn Book. Volumes I. London: Leadenhall Press, 1896.
She also asked a very interesting question:
Syllabaries have shown up as an aid to literacy from the time of the Formello Alphabet on an Etruscan vase to the Battledores of the early 1800’s. But what is the role of the syllable in the teaching of reading today?
Well, I am not qualified to answer that question, but my reading of the literature suggests that’s considered inferior to genuine phonics and is discouraged. In a way, one of the projects I am working on with Jen Smith and Elliott Moreton is to look at various teaching methods from an OT perspective. But that’s a long shot. I think the syllabary method has its merrits. We will see if we can prove it.
Another Horn Book (with which children could plan shuttlecocks after school). Notice the syllabary in both hornbooks: they are for ABCD only, but include both CV and VC forms. Source:
The British Battledore in Tuer, Andrew J. History of the Horn Book. Volumes II. London: Leadenhall Press, 1896.
(I haven’t figured out how trackback works on blogspot. They don’t even provide a link to RSS on the front page. You have to add "/atom.xml")
June 13th, 2005 at 10:14 pm e
Yes, the Japanese use of Kanji is a counter example. I am working on a blog about Robert Logan’s book, which I happen to have, by misadventure. It will take a few days. He made a few interesting changes in his new edition. Peculiar.
I will probably blog more about literacy education at some point. Your blog is the best one on writing sytems that I have seen yet. Language Hat is lots of fun too. (And I have no idea how RSS feeds work.)
June 13th, 2005 at 11:50 pm e
I look forward to your comments on Logan, but I dont’ know if I will read it myself. I do have pretty strong bias against him.
You might be interested in Johanna Drucker’s The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The letter in history and imagination, 1995, London: Thames & Hudson (my brief note: http://www.citeulike.org/user/garyfeng/article/227190).
On page 31 she mentioned the work by Isaac Taylor (1899):
“Taylor stated tat the outset the clear superiority he accorded alphabetic writing over that of other scripts, whose complexity led to the ‘degeneration of religion into magic, knowledge into superstition, and the increased caste separation of the learned rulers from their unlettered subjects.’ By contrast, a civilization which adopted alphabetic writing was capable of unlimited progress.”
Sounds like Logan but 100 years earler.
June 14th, 2005 at 2:40 am e
That is an interesting question about Isaac Taylor that I have been thinking about for a while. But Taylor affected everyone who came after him.
July 8th, 2005 at 7:49 pm e
I am now reading Johanna Drucker. It is indeed a great book - full of information, along with Richard Firmage’s “An Alphabet Abecedarium.” Somehow they each have chosen different illustrations for the same topic so I can read them well together.
The only other author who comes close to Drucker on the Middle Ages is Julia Kristeva “Language: The Unknown”.
Actually there is a very interesting thread in Drucker about the history of writing system science including Isaac Taylor. I have also read Philippe Berger, Cohen and Fevrier in French and hope one day to translate bits into English in my blog. They have not been translated yet. Drucker is one of the few people I have read that reference these authors.
Suzanne