Wednesday 1 June 2011

Final Post

 


THE HISTORY OF THE ALPHABET

INTRODUCTION
Writing is among the greatest inventions in human history, possibly the greatest invention, since it made history possible. (Robinson, 1995) After the cities appeared, people needed a way of keeping track of the vast number of things and people that were crowded together in the city’s many houses, palaces, store-rooms and workshops. (Avi-Yonah, 1974) The early city dwellers made-up marks or signs to represent the things and people they wanted to keep track of, and this is how the idea of writing first began. (Avi-Yonah, 1974) Once people could read and write, it wasn’t necessary to depend on memory to preserve knowledge, information could be written down, and it would be preserved exactly, as long as the material written on survived. (Avi-Yonah, 1974)
The ABC is such a simple experience for most of us, that once early school days are over, its use and form are taken for granted. (Gardner, 1982) As adults we rarely stop to think about the mental-cum-physical process that turns our thoughts into symbols on a piece of paper or on a computer screen. (Robinson, 1995) However, behind today’s letter shapes is a heritage as diverse and fascinating as that of any other art form. (Gardner, 1982)

EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS
The earliest Egyptian writing dates back to 3100BC. (Robinson, 1995) Egyptian hieroglyphs had 24 symbols for consonants, but they were constantly mixed in with hundreds of other symbols, making the system complex and difficult. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) Due to the fact that these consonant symbols were mixed in with hundreds of other symbols, these writings were known as hieroglyphs and not an alphabet per say.
Archaeologists from Yale, John and Deborah Darnell, discovered 2 inscriptions carved into a natural limestone wall representing the earliest-known phonetic alphabet, believed to have probably been inscribed around 1800B.C. (Himelfarb, 2000) These inscriptions were carved into a wall alongside hundreds of Egyptian inscriptions about 4,000 years ago. (Himelfarb, 2000) This script incorporated elements of earlier hieroglyphs and later Semitic characters. (Himelfarb, 2000)

SEMITIC ALPHABET
The first alphabet was the direct ancestor of all the alphabets used in the world today, including our familiar Roman/Latin one, the Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabets. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) The alphabet was assumed to have been inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphs, which had already been used for 2000 years. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) The Semites decided to decrease the number of symbols to 22, making it simpler to draw/write. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) Also, the hieroglyphs were intended for the Egyptian language, the new alphabet was custom made by the Semites for their language. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) It was invented sometime between 1000-2000 BC, somewhere in the Middle East. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) The North Semitic people had a their 22 letter alphabet working by about 1200 BC. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) By about 1100 BC, the North Semitic alphabet had settled into a form known as Phoenician. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) It was named Phoenician as it was used by the great Semitic traders who lived in the land to the east of the Mediterranean, known as Phoenicians. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004)
The Semitic/Phoenician languages still use the ancient way of writing from right to left. (Avi-Yonah, 1974) Phoenician has since evolved into three major alphabets over time: the Hebrew, the Arabic and the Greek (which is where our Roman/Latin alphabet is derived). (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004)

GREEK ALPHABET
The Greek alphabet was developed in about 1000 BC as a modification of Northern Semitic. (The Greek alphabet, 2002) Most of the names of the letters were carried straight over from Phoenician into Greek, with slight changes to make them suit the language. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) In Semitic languages, vowels are relatively unimportant and have a lot of consonantal sounds, therefore their alphabet had no symbols for vowels. (The Greek alphabet, 2002) The Greeks changed the alphabet so that consonantal signs which represented sounds not used by the Greeks, were re-used for vowel sounds. (The Greek alphabet, 2002) Due to the fact that these changes were not carried out uniformly across the Greek speaking world, two slightly different varieties of alphabet evolved, Western Greek, also known as Chalcidian  and Eastern Greek (now used by all the Greek-speaking world). (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) It is Western Greek which our alphabet is derived from. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) The Phoenician characters were rotated 90 degrees for the Greek alphabet or with the non-symmetrical characters, they were flipped horizontally when the direction of Greek switched from left to right. (Fradkin, 2000)
Most of the alphabets used today are direct descendants of the Greek alphabet. (The Greek alphabet, 2002) After all, the word alphabet itself is derived from the names of the first two Greek letters, Alpha and Beta. (The Greek alphabet, 2002)

ETRUSCAN ALPHABET
The Etruscans, people who lived in central Italy in the first millennium BC, spoke a language which is not related to any other known language and although it has never been deciphered, we know the way they used the alphabet. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) The Etruscans adopted the Western Greek alphabet and used it. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) This is important because some of the consequences are still with us today. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) The Etruscan language didn’t distinguish between voiced and unvoiced consonants, i.e. s and z were the same sound to them, as were t and d, p and b, k and g. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) The Etruscans couldn't distinguish between the k and the g sound, so they used the Greek Gamma (<) which represents a G, to mean a K sound. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) Therefore, the Etruscan alphabet had three letters for the K sound: C, K and Q. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) It can be assumed that they pronounced each of these with a slightly different sound. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) They adopted the Sigma, which was a zig-zag with four lines, to represent the s sound, but couldn't decide how many lines to put in the zig-zag, 3 to 6 lines. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) This is important because the three-line zig-zag that later became our S.

LATIN/ROMAN ALPHABET
The Latin alphabet is the most used system in the world, around 58 alphabets derived from the Latin alphabet are used today. (Wbais, 2009) The Latin/Roman alphabet is the only alphabet used for web addresses. (Wbais, 2009)
Around the 5th Century, the Latin’s adopted writing from the Etruscans and the Western Greeks. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) They left out the Z, Θ, Φ and Ψ characters of the Western Greek alphabet for the simple fact that they had no use for them. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004)
There were also a few letters that they needed to add to make the alphabet theirs. They needed a letter to represent the f sound, as the Etruscan language didn't have an f sound, and neither did Western Greek, so they adapted the Etruscan letter F (which was pronounced 'w') and gave it the sound 'f'. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) They also adopted an Etruscan three-lined zig-zag S but curved it to make the modern curvy S. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004)
At this time, the early Roman alphabet looked like this:
A B C D E F H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X

There are still a few more differences from our modern alphabet, such as; the C represented both the hard 'k' sound in 'cat' and the 'g' sound in 'garden’; I represented both the vowel we call 'i' and the 'y' sound that we get in the word 'yellow'; V represented both the U sound of 'put' and a consonantal sound which was somewhere between 'v' and 'w'. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) As mentioned above, the Romans took the Etruscans three letters for writing the k sound, C, K and Q. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) Also, the C was also used as a g sound. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) The Romans continued to use Q in certain circumstances before U, and invented G, by adding a bar across the C. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) With this cleared up, they did not need K, but decided to keep it just in case it became useful later. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004)
In the 3rd Century BC, Greek words started to be used in Latin, so the Romans transliterated most of the letters, making do with such combinations as PH instead of Φ and TH instead of Θ. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) But they had no way of writing two particular Greek sounds, so in about 100 AD, the Romans borrowed two letters from the Eastern Greek alphabet;
·         Y, very much the same as the V they got from Western Greek, is the slender U sound we get in the French 'tu';
·         Zeta Z for the z sound. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004)
These letters (Y and Z) were placed at the end of the alphabet as they were only used for writing Greek words. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004)

At this time the alphabet looked like this:
A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X Y Z

Due to the Roman governance of Europe, the Roman alphabet became the standard alphabet throughout Western Europe, and eventually spread throughout the Western World. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) After the Norman invasion of Britain in the 11th Century, the Anglo-Saxon language was written down using Roman letters. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) Unfortunately, there was no letter for the w sound of Anglo-Saxon, as it didn't exist in Latin. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) To begin with, they used the Runic wen which is represented by a narrow triangular p, but it was easily mixed up with the actual p, so they began writing it with a double u, which is how it got its name. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) The final letter to be added to the English alphabet was J. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) I and J started out as variations of a single letter, scribes might put a long tail on a final I if there were a few in a row, i.e. Henry the Eighth could be written 'Henry viij'. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) In about the 15th Century, people started to fix on the I for the vowel and the J for the consonant, but this was not fully accepted until the mid 17th Century. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) So from the 17th Century onward, our alphabet contained the same 26 letters as we now use. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) With this said, many scholars still treated it as having only 24: they still considered U and V as one letter, and I and J as one letter. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004) It wasn’t until the mid-19th Century that scholars fully accepted that these were separate letters and that there are 26 letters in the alphabet. (The Development of the Western Alphabet, 2004)

CONCLUSION
The alphabet is very much something that we take for-granted. As stated above, it is something that we learn early on in life and then barely think of for the rest. It is very interesting to think of how the alphabet began and also the evolution it has made from then until now. Changizi found that a vast majority of common letters take no more than 3 strokes to write (he hypothesises that this may be perhaps because short term memory can hold only 3 basic visual pieces of information at a time.) (Carmichael, 2006)
We will always read, but that writing may eventually be something that is rarely done due to technology advances. (Rotman, 2002)






REFERENCE LIST:

Avi-Yonah, Michael, 1974, Ancient Scrolls, The Lerner Archaeology Series, Lerner Publications Company, Minnesota, USA.

Carmichael, Mary, 2006, ‘’Y’ Is for Branch’, Newsweek, Vol. 147 Issue 19 pp12-12, EBSCOhost, viewed 13th April 2011.

Damrosch, David, 2007, Scriptworlds: Writing Systems and the Formation of World Literature, Modern Language Quarterly, Vol. 68 Issue 2 pp195-219, EBSCOhost, viewed 14th April, 2011

Fradkin, Robert, 2000, Evolution of Alphabets, University of Maryland, viewed 10th of April 2011, <http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~rfradkin/alphapage.html>.

Gardner, William 1982, Alphabet at Work, A & C Black, London.  

Haley, Allan 1995, Alphabet: The history, evolution and design of the letter we use today, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London.

Himelfarb, Elizabeth J., 2000, ‘First Alphabet Found in Egypt’, Archaeology, Vol. 53 Issue 1 pp21, EBSCOhost, viewed 13th April 2011.

Robinson, Andrew 1995, The Story of Writing: Alphabets, hieroglyphs & pictograms, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London.

Rotman, Brian, 2002, ‘The Alphabetic Body’, Parallax, Vol. 8 Issue 1 pp92-104, EBSCOhost, viewed 14th April, 2011.

Slings, S.R., 1998, ‘Tsade and he: Two problems in the early history of the Greek Alphabet’, Mnemosyne, vol. 51 Issue 6 pp641-658, EBSCOhost, viewed 13th April 2011.

The Development of the Western Alphabet: Edited Guide Entry – Everything / Language & Linguistics / Alphabets and Writing Systems, 2004, BBC, Viewed 10th of April 2011, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2451890>.

The Greek alphabet: Edited Guide Entry – Everything / Language & Linguistics / Alphabets and Writing Systems, 2002, BBC, viewed 10th of April 2011, < http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A216073>

Wbais 2009, The Origin of the Alphabet, 2009, 3 December, viewed 11th April 2011, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX0obs1n-nA&feature=related'>.

Wednesday 18 May 2011

Blog No. 6


REFERNCE LIST:

Avi-Yonah, Michael 1974, Ancient Scrolls, The Lerner Archaeology Series, Lerner Publications Company, Minnesota, USA.

Carmichael, Mary, 2006, ‘’Y’ Is for Branch’, Newsweek, Vol. 147 Issue 19 pp12-12, EBSCOhost, viewed 13th April 2011.

Damrosch, David, 2007, Scriptworlds: Writing Systems and the Formation of World Literature, Modern Language Quarterly, Vol. 68 Issue 2 pp195-219, EBSCOhost, viewed 14th April, 2011

Fradkin, Robert, 2000, Evolution of Alphabets, University of Maryland, viewed 10th of April 2011, < http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~rfradkin/alphapage.html>.

Gardner, William 1982, Alphabet at Work, A & C Black, London.

Haley, Allan 1995, Alphabet: The history, evolution and design of the letter we use today, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London.

Himelfarb, Elizabeth J., 2000, ‘First Alphabet Found in Egypt’, Archaeology, Vol. 53 Issue 1 pp21, EBSCOhost, viewed 13th April 2011.

Robinson, Andrew 1995, The Story of Writing: Alphabets, hieroglyphs & pictograms, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London.

Rotman, Brian, 2002, ‘The Alphabetic Body’, Parallax, Vol. 8 Issue 1 pp92-104, EBSCOhost, viewed 14th April, 2011.

Slings, S.R., 1998, ‘Tsade and he: Two problems in the early history of the Greek Alphabet’, Mnemosyne, vol. 51 Issue 6 pp641-658, EBSCOhost, viewed 13th April 2011.

The Development of the Western Alphabet: Edited Guide Entry – Everything / Language & Linguistics / Alphabets and Writing Systems, 2004, BBC, Viewed 10th of April 2011, < http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2451890>.

The Greek alphabet: Edited Guide Entry – Everything / Language & Linguistics / Alphabets and Writing Systems, 2002, BBC, viewed 10th of April 2011, < http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A216073>

Wbais2009, The Origin of the Alphabet, 2009, 3 December, viewed 11th April 2011, < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX0obs1n-nA&feature=related'>.


Discuss research ideas fully and constructively with relevant personnel, and identify any implications for the research brief.
As discussed in an earlier blog, there was some consideration that had to be taken as to what is considered an alphabet. Initial ‘writing’ per say was actually hieroglyphs which were small pictures, which began the trend to document things. I therefore had to decide if I was going to include this within my research. Being that the amount of characters for each blog was limited, and that I had more of an interest in the development of the actual alphabet, I decided to research just the development of the English alphabet.
Some other research ideas that I could have partaken in was to actually visit a museum to look at actual exhibits on the alphabet.

Reach agreement with the relevant personnel on the format, style and structure of materials best for the purpose.
Again as mentioned in a previous blog, there are different formats in which to receive information, such as video’s and radio clips in which to gain information. I decided not to use these formats for a couple of reasons. With regards to videos, such as those on YouTube, it is very hard to determine the credibility of the authors of these items, therefore they were excluded. This may be a very silly reason, but I find reading easier to find information from, therefore, I decided to leave the radio clip till last, and then I forgot all about it.

Identify potential difficulties in meeting the brief and draw to the attention of relevant personnel promptly.
I didn’t think of many difficulties in meeting the brief, but here is a couple which may cause some people some trouble:
·         Topic with not enough information available. This wasn’t a problem with my topic, what helped was to speak to the teacher to ensure that the topic was relevant and that this topic had been used before.
·         Problem with blog program, such a maintenance in which author could not maintain their blog or add more information (this difficulty I encountered).
·         Obviously no internet access would make it a little bit difficult, but then even if the author doesn’t have access at home, they could still access the internet either at university as well as at nearly all libraries.
·         Minimal experience with researching could make it difficult. I have completed two past university degrees, therefore I have had plenty of experience with researching, both within a library as well as on the internet.
·         Confidence with the internet could also have caused difficulty for some students. I am fairly proficient with the internet, using it every day for many different reasons.

Monday 16 May 2011

Blog No. 5


In this blog, I will discuss these two parts of the required task:
Use appropriate research and data gathering techniques and procedures so that materials and sources of information are identified within time constraints
Check that the materials identified are in an appropriate format for the purpose and technical capabilities required.

For this task, I completed 3 different resource gathering search types. The first search type I used was simply searching the internet. The second was searching through journals through the Swinburne University Databases on their Library site. Lastly, I searched the Swinburne Library in Prahran for resources.

Using the internet to search for information can have its strengths and weaknesses. These are as follows:
STRENGTHS
·         Easily accessible if internet is available
·         Can be done nearly anywhere at anytime
·         Can find information from different people all around the world
WEAKNESSES
·         Information can be unreliable (anyone can publish a website, and put on whatever information they want)
·         Can be quiet arduous with thousands of results coming back, and some having minimal information regarding search terms
·         Can be quiet confusing when going through hyperlinks and remembering where information came from and how to retrieve again
While searching the internet, I came across some videos. These were interesting, but similar to other websites, I could not be certain that the information was reliable. This is why I decided to not include any videos within my blog.
Using Journal article can be very helpful as they are generally from reliable sources. Unlike the internet, published journal article are read and checked by many different people, minimizing the chance of this information being hear say. Being on the internet, again, you can gather information from all over the world, making your research diverse and worldly. The one complication is that again, it can be quiet arduous going through all the results and finding relevant journals. Also it can be quiet difficult to know and decide which databases to look through as there are so many.  Finally, using databases can be somewhat frustrating, as you may find a resource that sounds perfect for what you want, and then the database may not have the full text, just the abstract.
Using the library catalogue is probably one of the easiest, as there is not such a large amount of resources available. The library can only hold so many resources due to space, and due to the fact that the university educates on so many topics, it has to hold only the newest and most used items in the library. It is also possible to have resources brought over from other campuses, but due to time constraints, I didn’t have time to wait.
With all search types, it is essential that the researcher user be able to change the search terms if the results are not what they are looking for. I did begin my search using the terms original alphabet, but at times had to change the terms to history alphabet to get different search results more along the topic I was looking for.
While researching, there were some interesting tables (especially from google search) that when I tried to publish within the blog would not display properly. This is one of the main technical difficulties that I had.

Blog No. 4

The last form of research i completed was to look within a library for books that I could physically borrow. I went to Swinburne Tafe in Prahran. I did a search for 'original alphabet' but the results seemed to focus on actually teaching children the alphabet. So I changed my search terms to 'history alphabet' and received more relevant results. I only looked at books and resources in Prahran, and these are the resources I came up with, and some of the quotes I will be using in the final piece.



Picture taken from Amazon.com


The Story of Writing by Andrew Robinson
·         Writing is among the greatest inventions in human history, perhaps the greatest invention, since it made history possible, yet is it a skill most writers take for granted.
·         We learn it at school, and as adults we seldom stop to think about the mental-cum-physical process that turn our thoughts into symbols on a piece of paper or on a video screen, or bytes of information in a computer disc.
·         The earliest Egyptian writing dates from 3100BC, that of the Indus Valley from 2500BC, that of Crete from 1900BC, that of China from 1200BC, that of Central America deom 600BC (all dates are approximations,)
Writing: A Chronicle
Date
Historical  Moment
Date
Historical  Moment
Ice Age
(after 25,00BC)
Proto-writing, i.e. pictographic communication, in use
2nd cent.
Runic inscription begin, northern Europe
8000BC onwards
Clay ‘tokens’in use as counters, Middle East
394
Last inscription written in Egyptian hieroglyphs
3300BC
Sumerian clay tablets with writing, Uruk, Iraq
615-683
Pacal, Classic Maya ruler of Palenque, Mexico
3100BC
Cuneiform inscriptions begin, Mesopotamia
712
Kojiki, earliest work of Japanese literature (in Chinese characters)
3100-3000BC
Hieroglyphic inscriptions begin, Egypt
Before 800
Printing invented, China
2500BC
Indus script begins, Pakistan/N.W. India
9th cent.
Cyrillic alphabet invented, Russia
18th cent. BC
Cretan Linear A inscriptions begin
1418-1450
Sejong, king of Korea, reighs; invents Hangul alphabet
1792-1750BC
Hammurabi, king of Babylon, reigns; inscribes law code on stela
15th cent.
Movable type invented, Europe
17th-16th cent. BC
First known alphabet, Palestine
1560s
Diego de Landa records Mayan ‘alphabet’, Yucatan
1450BC
Cretan Linear B inscription begins
1799
Rosetta stone discovered, Egypt
14th cent. BC
Alphabetic cuneiform inscriptions Ugarit, Syria
1821
Cherokee ‘alphabet’ invented by Sequoya, USA
1361-1352BC
Tutankhamun reigns, Egypt
1823
Egyptian hieroglyphs deciphered by Champollion
c. 1285 BC
Battle of Kadesh celebrated by both Ramesses II and Hittites
1840s onwards
Mesopotamian cuneiform deciphered by Rawlinson, Hincks and others
1200BC
Oracle bone inscriptions in Chinese characters begin
1867
Typewriter invented
1000BC
Phoenician alphabetic inscriptions begin, Mediterranean area
1899
Oracle bone inscriptions discovered
730BC
Greek alphabetic inscriptions begin
1900
Knossos discovered by Evans, who identifies Cretan Linear A and B
c. 8th cent. BC
Etruscan alphabet appears, northern Italy
1905
Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions discovered by Petrie, Serabit el-Khadim, Sinai
650BC
Demotic inscriptions, derived from hieroglyphs, begin, Egypt
1908
Phaistos Disc discovered, Crete
600BC
Glyphic inscriptions begin, Mesoamerica
1920s
Indus civilization discovered
521-486BC
Darius, king of the Persians, reigns; creates Behistun inscription (key to decipherment of cuneiform)
1940s
Electronic computers invented
400BC
Ionian alphabet becomes standard Greek alphabet
1948
Hebrew becomes a national language in Israel
c. 270-c. 232BC
Ashoka creates rock edicts in Brahmi and Kharosthi script, northern India
1953
Linear B deciphered by Ventis
221BC
Qin dynasty reforms Chinese character spelling
1950s onwards
Mayan glyphs deciphered
c. 2nd cent. BC
Paper invented, paper
1958
Pinyin spelling introduced in China
1st cent. AD
Dead Sea Scrolls written in Aramaic/Hebrew script
1980s
Wordprocessors invented; writing becomes electronic
75AD
Last inscription written in cuneiform
23 Dec. 2012
Current Maya Great Cycle of time due to end


Alphabet at Work by William Gardner
·         The ABC is such a rudimentary experience for most of us that once early school days are over, its use and form are taken for granted. Behind today’s letter shapes, however, is a heritage as diverse and fascinating as that of any other art form.

Ancient Scrolls: The Lerner Archaeology Series by Michael Avi-Yonah
·         After the cities appeared, people needed some way of keeping track of the great number of things and people that were crowded together in the city’s many houses, store-rooms, workshops, and palaces. The earl city dwellers invented marks or signs to represent the things and people they wanted to keep track of, and this is how the idea of writing began.
·         Once people could read and write, it was not necessary to depend on a person’s memory to preserve knowledge. Information could be written down, and it would be preserved exactly, as long as the material it was written on survived. In fact, some of the earliest writings of mankind have survived into our own time, and they are now kept carefully guarded in museums.
·         The Semitic languages – which include Hebrew and Arabic – still use this ancient way of writing from right to left.