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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Major Linguistic Areas in the World
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References: <01bbf1a1$2bddb780$965f47cc@jhoward.vvm.com> <5bktaj$p1@lorne.stir.ac.uk> <01bbf57c$b7431fc0$5c5f47cc@jhoward.vvm.com>
Date: Sun, 19 Jan 1997 16:55:50 GMT
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In article <01bbf57c$b7431fc0$5c5f47cc@jhoward.vvm.com>,
Jim Howard <jhoward@vvm.com> wrote:
>
>Richard Badger <rgb3@stir.ac.uk> wrote in article
><5bktaj$p1@lorne.stir.ac.uk>...
>
>> This classification is based on two criteria: alphabets versus ideograms 
>> or logograms; and direction left to right versus right to left. This 
>> ignores syllabic writing, such as some aspects of Japanese, and the 
>> possibility of up-down or down-up. If you include these you get many more
>> possibilities eg ideograph, left-right: syllabic, up-down.
>> 
>> I would be interested to know on what basis these other possibilities are
>> omitted. 
>
>They aren't as fundamental.  No other writing system/language has the
>continuous history of the Chinese and Hebrew(Semitic) systems, which go
>back over 3000 years.  Other systems are merely offshoots, not really
>representing major trends in language/writing systems of mankind.  

As someone pointed out earlier, almost all systems used west of the Mekong
are offshoots of Hiaeroglyphics.  By what criteria can you consider the
modern Latin and Arabic alphabets more "basic" than modern Devanagari?
They're certainly younger, for instance, and less distinct from each other
than Devanagari is from both.

>The
>effort is to find the smallest number of major representatives - aren't
>they about three?  I wouldn't recommend a person learning a minor language
>when they could learn a truly widespread, fundamental language - such as
>Chinese and a Semitic language.

	A truly widespread fundamental language--like Aramaic?  Tigre?
Akkadian?  Arabic and Hebrew are the only truly widespread Semitic
languages and the latter, despite being in use throughout the world, has
markedly fewer speakers than than the former (and fewer than other Semitic
languages like Amharic and Tigre).  Now, I don't understand what you think
makes a language "fundamental".  Depth of recorded history?  Notariety in
the West?

	For the replies I've read, there seems to be a consensus that
South Asia, with its numerous scripts based on Devanagari, is an extremely
immportant cultural area that should not be neglected.  You seem to have
lumped it together with the Middle East (presumably because a large number
of inhabitants use the Arabic script to communicate).  However, to my
mind, if makes more sense to lump the "Islamic bloc" together with the
"Christian" one (see my previous post for details) than with the "Hindu"
one. After all, Islam and Christianity are both offshoots of Judaism.
The works of the Greek philosophers and Arabic mathematicians had a great
impact on both cultural blocs (before colonisation, how many Hindus had 
read Plato?) and more than a millenium of close contact (ask yourself:
"How many years did Muslims rule India?  Now, how many years did they rule
Greece and Asia Minor?") led to a large degree of interchange.  Even by a
stricly alphabetic criterion, there is more in common between the Latin
and Arabic alphabet than between either and Devanagari--despite the
direction of the scripts and the use of full vowels in Latin script.  

	I really think you're fixating on a single rather superficial
feature here.  After all, where Central Asia fits in your scheme depends
entirely on whether the countries there a) retain the Cyrillic script, b)
switch to Latin, c) switch to Arabic.  Also, I wonder what you do about
Africa.  Is it parcelled out into "Semitic" and "Latin" areas depending
entirely on the script (which would lump Christian Ethiopia together with
Muslim North and Africa rather than predominately Christian East Central
Africa)?

>> I would also be interested to know how you decide what makes a writing 
>> system simple. I would have thought this must be a function of the 
>> relationship with the related spoken language and this would mean that it
>> is not possible to say that a particular kind of ideograms, for example, 
>> are simpler than any other kind.
>> 
>Chinese is the only ideogram writing system, isn't it?  

No.  It's not ideogrammic.  It's currently the only widely-used
logographic system, however.

>And the modern simplified Chinese ideograms are clearly more simple than
>the older, traditional ones.

Simpler for whom?  As Mr. Lee pointed out, the simplifications increase
the number of homonymns.  Furthermore, one of the major trends in the
official simplification was replacing complicated phonetics with simpler
ones.  Unfortunately, the reform was done with only Mandarin in mind and,
in most dialects, some of the "simpler phonetics" sound *less* like the
syllable they are representing than the phonetics they are replacing.  How
can you call a more *away* from reflecting pronunciation in writing a
"simplification"?



-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
