История письма и чтения. Асафова Г.К. - 59 стр.

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LETTERS DRAWN ON CLAY

AND CARVED IN STONE

Clay was moulded into the records of the ancient world, as well as its bricks,

tiles and pots. From before 3000 BC, Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia kept

records by drawing pictures on soft clay tablets with a pointed stylus, then leaving

the tablets to harden in the sun. During the next 200-300 years, the pictures

evolved into symbols composed of triangular or wedge-shaped imprints in the clay,

made using the straight-cut end of a reed stylus. This script is known as cuneiform,

from cuneus, Latin for “wedge”.

Building words out of syllables

Cuneiform symbols could represent abstract ideas, as well as objects. This

sometimes caused confusion. For example, a circle not only represented the sun,

but also the concept of heat and time associated with it. Instead of creating even

more symbols, scribes began to join two or more symbols together to form more

complex words. It is as if in English, to make the word “treason”, we joined the

words “tree” and “son”. In this way, short words came to represent the syllables of

a longer word with a different meaning, and came to have a phonetic value.

Initially the system included around 1200 symbols.

The Chinese develop a different system of writing. The earliest examples,

dating back to about 1700 BC, are simple pictures of everyday objects and

activities. Each character represented a whole word, rather than just a sound; more

than 9000 characters were in use by AD 220.

VOCABULARY

Bunch n.

Пучок, связка

Character n.

Знак, буква, литера