61–70 of 110 posts
I was hoping an HN reader would be able to comment on what the purpose of the middle (𓂹) symbol is. Anyone? Googling the symbol hasn't provided any leads.
The folded cloth was used by itself or in combination with many other signs, for example: 𓋴 U+132F4 folded cloth 𓄸 U+13138 folded cloth and intestines 𓋵 U+132F5 folded cloth and horned viper 𓋶 U+132F6 folded cloth and sickle 𓌭 U+1332D folded cloth and knife sharpener 𓌯 U+1332F folded cloth and butcher's knife sharpener There are other signs that they also combined like this, for example, 𓌌 U+1330C cobra with m…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most common use is probably as a determinative. Ancient Egyptian, much like many Semitic languages, omits the vowels in a word in writing. Determinatives are ideograms that disambiguate between several words with the same consonants but different meanings. That's an interesting fact. As someone with no knowledge of how languages are formed it makes me wonder why have a written language that purposefully omits vow…
They didn't remove em, it just never occured to them to have them. There's still an interesting question about why old languages from that region didn't have vowels, if this is true of other ancient written languages from other regions, when vowels were added/why/etc.
The first written Semitic language, Akkadian, _does_ indicate vowels, because doing so is mandatory in the writing system Akkadian used, the cuneiform originally developed for Sumerian.
(Egyptian is closely related to the Semitic languages, but not quite closely enough that it's called Semitic. Instead both are grouped together in the larger category of "afroasiatic" languages, also including other south-Mediterranean languages.)
It may never have occurred to the Egyptians to include vowels in their writing, but omitting vowels from Phoenician can only have been a purposeful choice, as the existing systems (except Egyptian) did have them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most common use is probably as a determinative. Ancient Egyptian, much like many Semitic languages, omits the vowels in a word in writing. Determinatives are ideograms that disambiguate between several words with the same consonants but different meanings. That's an interesting fact. As someone with no knowledge of how languages are formed it makes me wonder why have a written language that purposefully omits vow…
They didn't "remove vowels" as much as started out without them! We're talking times when writing itself was utter novelty, a curiosity performed by a handful of scribes primarily for accounting purposes, and of no great importance to daily life at all. By contrast, cuneiform (of Sumer origin -- a traditional rival power to ancient Egypt) did have vowels. A surprising amount of history—writing, speaking, war, splitti…
One caveat: As I understand things, Sumerian started out without vowels (or consonants), much like Chinese, but developed phonetic usage over time (unlike Chinese :( ). This has resulted in early texts being much harder to read than later texts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most common use is probably as a determinative. Ancient Egyptian, much like many Semitic languages, omits the vowels in a word in writing. Determinatives are ideograms that disambiguate between several words with the same consonants but different meanings. That's an interesting fact. As someone with no knowledge of how languages are formed it makes me wonder why have a written language that purposefully omits vow…
They didn't "remove vowels" as much as started out without them! We're talking times when writing itself was utter novelty, a curiosity performed by a handful of scribes primarily for accounting purposes, and of no great importance to daily life at all. By contrast, cuneiform (of Sumer origin -- a traditional rival power to ancient Egypt) did have vowels. A surprising amount of history—writing, speaking, war, splitti…
A great illustration of this is alphabets. Look at the Latin Alphabet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_alphabet Most ancient words are "foreign" (heh-heh), but most letters are quite recognizable.
Also quite a few of the ancient Greek letters are still in today's English alphabet (via Latin).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They didn't remove em, it just never occured to them to have them. There's still an interesting question about why old languages from that region didn't have vowels, if this is true of other ancient written languages from other regions, when vowels were added/why/etc.
Chinese writing to this day doesn't indicate the sound of the word at all. A fortiori, it doesn't indicate vowels. The first written Semitic language, Akkadian, _does_ indicate vowels, because doing so is mandatory in the writing system Akkadian used, the cuneiform originally developed for Sumerian. (Egyptian is closely related to the Semitic languages, but not quite closely enough that it's called Semitic. Instead b…
This web page suggests that the earliest known written languages were all vowel-less, including the ancient Egyptian alphabet, Proto-Canaanite, Phoenician, and South Arabian. It doesn't mention Akkadian though.
https://www.ancient.eu/alphabet/
Other googling suggests Phoenician developed from Proto-Canaanite. Even if other written languages with vowels were around at the time it developed, I don't know if that means it was a _purposeful choice_ exactly. Just based on how languages works, it seems plausible it just evolved from Proto-Canaanite by people who knew how to write Proto-Canaanite, which doesn't necessarily mean they thought "Gee, should we add in vowels like those Akkadians?" I don't know if we have any way of knowing?
But you may know more about it than me, or what I found on google.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They didn't remove em, it just never occured to them to have them. There's still an interesting question about why old languages from that region didn't have vowels, if this is true of other ancient written languages from other regions, when vowels were added/why/etc.
Still strange, given the rebus principle of phonetic hieroglyph use mentioned above: why would I use a pictures of a bee and a rock to form the sound baroque? Why not a bar and a rock (or a ba, whatever that would be)? If you take existing, drawable words you implicitly get the vowels with the consonants, unless explicitly ruled out by convention. Maybe the answer is dialects, that there was much wider consensus over…
Hebrew still (mostly) lacks vowels (and Arabic has a few, but is missing some we'd expect as important to pronunciation), to this day. I wonder if we asked a contemporary Hebrew speaker if "you implicitly get the vowels with the consonants" when you combine phonetic representations, if they would agree.
In any event, it's usually a mistake to assume you know what was obvious or implicit or straightforward to people living thousands of years ago. Different things were.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chinese writing to this day doesn't indicate the sound of the word at all. A fortiori, it doesn't indicate vowels. The first written Semitic language, Akkadian, _does_ indicate vowels, because doing so is mandatory in the writing system Akkadian used, the cuneiform originally developed for Sumerian. (Egyptian is closely related to the Semitic languages, but not quite closely enough that it's called Semitic. Instead b…
Thanks for the more information! I may not have known what I thought I knew. However, some googling leaves me still unsure. This web page suggests that the earliest known written languages were all vowel-less, including the ancient Egyptian alphabet, Proto-Canaanite, Phoenician, and South Arabian. It doesn't mention Akkadian though. https://www.ancient.eu/alphabet/ Other googling suggests Phoenician developed from Pr…
A fun fact that I particularly like: the form "Ra" for the old Egyptian sun deity is a transcription convention which transcribes an Egyptian consonant as the vowel "a". The Egyptians generally did not include a vowel in their writings of the name. However, we actually do know the vowel used in the god's name, because he is mentioned in diplomatic correspondence, written in Akkadian. The vowel is [i] (as in the English word "bee"), occurring between the R and the "A" (which is actually one of those back-of-throat consonants that modern Egyptians are so proud of).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most common use is probably as a determinative. Ancient Egyptian, much like many Semitic languages, omits the vowels in a word in writing. Determinatives are ideograms that disambiguate between several words with the same consonants but different meanings. That's an interesting fact. As someone with no knowledge of how languages are formed it makes me wonder why have a written language that purposefully omits vow…
In the same way their written language couldn't express vowels, the english written language cannot adequately express the full range of tones and pauses we have when speaking. People have attempted to convey some portions of spoken tone with thing like the " " tag, and commas/ellipses/etc all convey some level of pauses, but they are not substitutes for the full nuance of spoken english. Asking "Why did their writte…
A good illustration of this can be found in live speeches or interviews. A transcript often seems confusing or disjointed. When you view the actual speech itself it's cohesive and easily understood.