Re: Invention of the Alphabet

Peter T. Daniels wrote:

       However, I question how well, and whether, one could write
Greek, or English, without vowels if also one did not write
word divisions, as was the custom at first.

       I'm sure you can understand this.

       M sr y cn ndrstnd ths

Msrycnndrstndths 

If you're going to do this silly exercise, don't leave out notation for
initial vowels (and don't use digraphs):

@mSrycn@ndrstndDs.

I'll have to give this some more thought. As you know, that leaves room for a lot of ambiguity. I think Woodard talked about all this in his book, that Greek can indeed be written without vowels, and pointing out that ambiguities arise in Semitic as well without vowels. However, would you agree that vowels are needed more in Greek and Indo-European languages in general than in Semitic ones? I did say that it was relative, after all.

       I think Greek would be rather like English in that regard,
with about the same sort of consonant cluster sizes.  How
about Ukrainian?  This site is an example of what can go
wrong if one leaves out both vowels and word divisions there.

http://home.att.net/~oko/home.htm

Obviously something like Ukrainian is worse without vowels, since it has more consonant clusters. That is how this fellow gets the freedom to read what he wants.

       Is Persian written without word divisions?  How about Urdu?
 I doubt it, though I don't know.



Persian and Urdu are written with the Arabic script, which marks the
ends of words by means other than additional space.

What, though, is a word?

Do you have any trouble reading Thai or Chinese? No word divisions in
either script.

I don't think that's a proper comparison. Thai is pretty phonemic, while Chinese is logographic. So there all you lack is the word divisions. And, of course, we've already said that ancient Greek writing lacked word divisions. AFAIK, Etruscan was the only thing from that time period that did include them.

The question of what is a word does indeed arise there. I think the Chinese consider each syllable a word, but in fact multi-syllable units often form words. I'm not sure that's germane to this discussion.

Dennis

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Relevant Pages

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  • Re: Invention of the Alphabet
    ... Greek, or English, without vowels if also one did not write word divisions, as was the custom at first. ... I think Woodard talked about all this in his book, that Greek can indeed be written without vowels, and pointing out that ambiguities arise in Semitic as well without vowels. ... I think the Chinese consider each syllable a word, but in fact multi-syllable units often form words. ...
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  • Re: Invention of the Alphabet
    ... Greek, or English, without vowels if also one did not write word divisions, as was the custom at first. ...
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  • Re: Invention of the Alphabet
    ... > Joachim Pense wrote: ... >>> Do you have any trouble reading Thai or Chinese? ...
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