Anthropology

by A. L. Kroeber

CHAPTER XI
THE SPREAD OF THE ALPHABET

[130.] Kinds of writing: pictographic and mixed phonetic.—[131.] Deficiencies of transitional systems.—[132.] Abbreviation and conventionalization.—[133.] Presumptive origins of transitional systems.—[134.] Phonetic writing: the primitive Semitic alphabet.—[135.] The Greek alphabet: invention of the vowels.—[136.] Slowness of the invention.—[137.] The Roman alphabet.—[138.] Letters as numeral signs.—[139.] Reform in institutions.—[140.] The sixth and seventh letters.—[141.] The tail of the alphabet.—[142.] Capitals and minuscules.—[143.] Conservatism and rationalization.—[144.] Gothic.—[145.] Hebrew and Arabic.—[146.] The spread eastward: the writing of India.—[147.] Syllabic tendencies.—[148.] The East Indies: Philippine alphabets.—[149.] Northern Asia: the conflict of systems in Korea.

130. Kinds of Writing: Pictographic and Mixed Phonetic

Three stages are logically distinguishable in the development of writing. The first is the use of pictures of things and symbols of ideas: the pictographic method. In the second stage the representation of sounds begins, but is made through pictures or abbreviations of pictures: and pictures or ideographs as such continue to be used alongside the pictures whose value is phonetic. This may be called the mixed or transitional or rebus stage. Third is the phonetic phase. In this, the symbols used, whatever their origin may have been, no longer denote objects or ideas but are merely signs for sounds—words, syllables, or the elemental letter-sounds.

The first of these stages, the pictographic, and the degree to which it flows, or rather fails to flow spontaneously out of the human mind, have already been discussed (§ [105]). The second or transitional stage makes use of the principle that pictures may either be interpreted directly as pictures or can be named. A picture or suggestive sketch of the organ of sight may stand for the thing itself, the eye. Or, the emphasis may be on the word eye, its sound; then the picture can be made with the purpose of representing that sound when it has a different meaning, as in the pronoun “I.” The method is familiar to us in the form of the game which we call “rebus,” that is, a method of writing “with things” or pictures of objects. The insect bee stands for the abstract verb “be,” two strokes or the figure 2 for the preposition “to,” a picture of a house with the sign of a tavern, that is an inn, for the prefix “in-,” and so on. This charade-like method is cumbersome and indirect enough to provide the difficulty of interpretation that makes it fit for a game or puzzle. But what to us, who have a system of writing, is a mere sport or occasional toy, is also the method by which peoples without writing other than pure pictography made their first steps toward the writing of words and sounds. The principle of reading the name instead of the idea of the thing pictured is therefore a most important invention. It made possible the writing of pronouns, prepositions, prefixes and suffixes, grammatical endings, articles, and the like, which are incapable of representation by pictography alone. There is no difficulty drawing a recognizable picture of a man, and two or three such pictures might give the idea of men. But no picture system can express the difference between “a man” and “the man.” Nor can relational or abstract ideas like those of “here,” “that,” “by,” “of,” “you,” “why,” be expressed by pictures.

131. Deficiencies of Transitional Systems

Important as the invention of the designation of words or sounds therefore was, it was at first hesitant, cumbersome, and incomplete as compared with modern alphabets. For one thing, many symbols were required. They had to be pictured with some accuracy to be recognizable. A picture of a bee must be made with some detail and care to be distinguishable with certainty from that of a fly or wasp or beetle. An inn must be drawn with its sign or shield or some clear identifying mark, else it is likely to be read as house or barn or hut or shop. The figure of the human eye is a more elaborate character than the letter I. Then, too, the old pictures did not go out of use. When the writing referred to bees and inns and eyes, pictures of these things were written and read as pictures. The result was that a picture of an eye would in one passage stand for the organ and in another for the personal pronoun. Which its meaning was, had to be guessed from the context. If the interpretation as pronoun fitted best—for instance, if the next characters meant “tell you”—that interpretation was chosen; but if the next word were recognized to be “brow,” or “wink,” the character would be interpreted as denoting the sense organ. That is, the same characters were sometimes read by their sense and sometimes by their sound, once pictographically and once phonetically. Hence the system was really transitional or mixed, whereas a true alphabet, which represents sounds only, is unmixed or pure in principle. Owing to the paucity of sound signs at first, the object or idea signs had to be retained; after they were once well established, they continued to be kept alongside the sound signs even after these had grown numerous. The tenacity of most mixed systems is remarkable. The Egyptians early added word signs and then syllable and pure letter signs to their object signs. After they had evolved a set of letter signs for the principal sounds of their language, they might perfectly well have discarded all the rest of their hundreds of characters. But for three thousand years they clung to these, and wrote pictographic and phonetic characters jumbled together. They would even duplicate to make sure: as if we should write e-y-e and then follow with a picture of an eye, for fear, as it were, that the spelling out was not sufficiently clear. From our modern point of view it seems at first quite extraordinary that they should have continued to follow this plan a thousand years after nations with whom they were in contact, Phœnicians, Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, were using simple, brief, accurate, pure alphabets. Yet of course they were only following the grooves of crystallized habit, as when we write “weight” or “piece” with unnecessary letters, or employ a combination of two simple letters each having its own value, like T and H, to represent a third simple sound, that of TH. With us, as it was with the Egyptians, it would be more of a wrench and effort for the adult generation to change to new and simpler characters or methods than to continue in the old cumbersome habits. So the advantage of the next generation is stifled and the established awkward system goes on indefinitely.

132. Abbreviation and Conventionalization

This mixture of pictographic and ideographic with phonetic characters, and its long retention, were substantially as characteristic of Sumerian or Babylonian Cuneiform, of Chinese, and of Maya and Aztec writing, as of Egyptian. In all of these systems there was more or less tendency to abbreviate the pictures, to contract them to a few strokes, to reduce the original representations to conventional characters. Cuneiform and presumably Chinese underwent this process early and profoundly. In Egyptian it also set in and led to Hieratic and later to Demotic cursive script, which consist of signs that are meaningless to the eye, although they resolve into standardized reductions of the pictures which during the same period continued to be made in the monumental and religious Hieroglyphic. Such conventional abbreviations made possible a certain speed of production, rendered writing of use in business and daily life, and thereby contributed to the spread of literacy. In themselves, however, they introduced no new principle.