Origin of The Writing Language

Writing was first invented by the Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia before 3,000
BC. It was also independently invented in Meso-America before 600 BC and

probably independently invented in China before 1,300 BC. It may have been
independently invented in Egypt around 3,000 BC although given the geographical
proximity between Egypt and Mesopotamia the Egyptians may have learnt writing
from the Sumerians.
There are three basic types of writing systems. The written signs used by the writing
system could represent either a whole word, a syllable or an individual sound. Where
the written sign represents a word the system is known as logographic as it uses
logograms which are written signs that represent a word. The earliest writing
systems such as the Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Mayan glyphs
are predominantly logo graphics as are modern Chinese and Japanese writing
systems. Where the written sign represents a syllable the writing system is known as
syllabic. Syllabic writing systems were more common in the ancient world than they
are today. The Linear A and B writing systems of Minoan Crete and Mycenaean
Greece are syllabic. The most common writing systems today are alphabetical. These
involve the written sign (a letter) representing a single sound (known as a phoneme).
The earliest known alphabetical systems were developed by speakers of semetic
languages around 1700 BC in the area of modern day Israel and Palestine. All written
languages will predominantly use one or other of the above systems. They may
however partly use the other systems. No written language is purely alphabetic,
syllabic or logographic but may use elements from any or all systems.
Such fully developed writing only emerged after development from simpler systems.
Talley sticks with notches on them to represent a number of sheep or to record a
debt have been used in the past. Knotted strings have been used as a form of record
keeping particularly in the area around the Pacific rim. They reached their greatest
development with the Inca quipus where they were used to record payment of tribute
and to record commercial transactions. A specially trained group of quipu makers
and readers managed the whole system. The use of pictures for the purpose of
communication was used by native Americans and by the Ashanti and Ewe people in
Africa. Pictures can show qualities and characteristics which can not be shown by
tally sticks and knot records. They do not however amount to writing as they do not
bear a conventional relationship to language.
An alternative idea was that a system by which tokens, which represented objects
like sheep, were placed in containers and the containers were marked on the outside
indicating the number and type of tokens within the container gave rise to writing in
Mesopotamia. The marks on the outside of the container were a direct symbolic
representation of the tokens inside the container and an indirect symbolic
representation of the object the token represented. The marks on the outside of the
containers were graphically identical to some of the earliest pictograms used in
Sumerian cuneiform, the world's first written language. However cuneiform has
approximately 1,500 signs and the marks on the outside of the containers can only
explain the origins of a few of those signs.
The first written language was the Sumerian cuneiform. Writing mainly consisted of
records of numbers of sheep, goats and cattle and quantities of grain. Eventually clay
tablets were used as a writing surface and were marked with a reed stylus to produce
the writing. Thousands of such clay tablets have been found in the Sumerian city of
Uruk. The earliest Sumerian writing consists of pictures of the objects mentioned
such as sheep or cattle. Eventually the pictures became more abstract and were to
consist of straight lines that looked like wedges.
The earliest cuneiform was an accounting system consisting of pictograms

representing commodities such as sheep and a number. The clay tablets found might
for example simply state “ten sheep''. Such writing obviously has its limitations and
would not be regarded as a complete writing system. A complete writing system only
developed with the process of phonctization. This occurs when the symbol ceases to
represent an object and begins to represent a spoken sound, which in early
cuneiform would be a word. This process was assisted when the symbols which
initially looked very like the object they represented gradually became more abstract
and less clearly related to an object. However while the symbol became more closely
connected to words, it was words dealing with objects, such as sheep, bird or pot. It
was still not possible to write more abstract ideas such as father, running, speech or
foreigner.
The solution to this problem was known as the rebus principle. Words with the same
or similar pronunciation to an abstract word could be used to represent the abstract
word. The sign for eye could be used to represent the word “I”. The sign for deer
could represent the word “dear”. Which word is referred to by the picture is decided
by an additional sign. Pictographs which originally represented a word began to
represent the sound of the word. The rebus principle is used to represent abstract
words in all word writing systems in Sumer, Egypt, China and in the Aztec and
Mayan writing in central America.
The Rebus principle lead to cuneiform becoming a form of logo-syllabic writing

consisting of both logograms and syllabic writing. The effect of the change from
logographic to logo-syllabic writing was substantial. Logographic writing cannot
produce normal prose and is restricted to nouns, numbers, names and adjectives.
The vast majority of early Sumerian writing consisted of bureaucratic records of
products received or products distributed. Only when syllabic writing was
introduced into cuneiform did it become possible to write prose such as myths and
royal propaganda.
The next major development in writing in the old world was the development of the
alphabet. The alphabet was developed out of Egyptian hieroglyphs which contained
24 signs for 24 Egyptian consonants. About 1700 BC Semites who knew Egyptian
hieroglyphs began making certain changes in their writing system. They put the
letters in a particular sequence and gave them simple names to assist learning and
ease of memory. They also dropped the logograms and other signs used in
hieroglyphs and just kept the Egyptian consonants and restricted the signs to those
for individual consonants. Finally, they introduced vowels into their alphabet.
Alphabets were soon to spread over most of the world as they provide both flexibility
and simplicity for a writing system

Origin of The Writing Language

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Origin of The Writing Language

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Writing was first invented by the Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia before 3,000

BC. It was also independently invented in Meso-America before 600 BC and

The earliest cuneiform was an accounting system consisting of pictograms

The Rebus principle lead to cuneiform becoming a form of logo-syllabic writing

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