On Thu, 3 Jun 2004 10:54:32 -0700, "Circe" wrote:
Holger Dansk wrote:
Written language began about 3,000 years ago.
Wrong again, BTW.
"Nothing that we can call writing, however, evolved before about 3000
B.C. In other words, spoken human language seems to have been around
from at least 30,000 - 50,000 years before writing was invented."
You finally got something a little bit right.
The Sumerians began writing with pictographs around 3,200 BCW (a little over
5,000 years ago). The Egyptians developed hieroglyphic writing around the
same time. People in the Indus valley were writing by 2,500 BC, using both
pictographs and alphabetic symbols for individual characters. See
http://www.english.uga.edu/~hypertxt...y-writing.html
Good! Good! Keep searching for web sites like this and you will
stumble across many like the one below that mention the Greeks adding
vowels.
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fa...itinglect.html
Holger
http://www.mindspring.com/~holger1/holger1.htm