Technology discovery question

[LuvsTigers2003]

Jsut noticed taht you can discover writting before Alphabet.. Would it not make more sense to discover alpahbet first, then writting ?

 

[BCLG100]

i wondered that but then came to the conclusion that egyptians wrote in hieroglyphics before ABC etc was discovered. thats how i can think of justifying it.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

You can't have an alphabet without Writing (an Alphabet is a Type of writing)
You can have a Writing without an alphabet (Egypt, China)

The fact is the way it Was in Civ 1-3 (Alphabet before writing) was wrong.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Right.
Many civilizations (egypt, china, inca...) have developed some kind of writing without an alphabet.
Alphabet is not necessary, but makes things much easier...

 

[zeeter]

I understand the points of you folks, but wouldn't heiroglyphics and chinese symbols be synonymous with an alphabet? Just because theyr'e not abc's doesn't mean that they serve the same purpose.

And no - I didn't spell check this. Don't kill me.

 

[MrCynical]

In hieroglyphics and similar each symbol represents one specific object or idea. In an alphabet a symbol corresponds to a specific sound (or several sounds), not necessarily a specific object or idea. For instance "h" doesn't mean anything on its own. Hieroglyphics and Chinese symbols have actual meanings in their own right, and do not merely represent sounds. As such they can exist without a phonetic alphabet. I suppose you could regard the entire list of possible symbols as an "alphabet", but it is in practice not the same thing at all. Alphabets are a development of writing, and for example are a big advantage when making movable type.

It was debated quite a lot before Civ 4 was produced which way round this should be, but I think this is by far the more sensible way round. Consider; you can have writing without a true alphabet, as in pictographic writing, but you cannot have an alphabet without writing. No one would learn "a", "b", "c" etc before they had a written language that used the sounds they represent. They have no intrinsic meaning (well "a" does, but most of them don't). Alphabet is simply a refinement of writing.

 

[Zherak_Khan]

I think the thing here is that in an alphabet, the symbols aren't drawings of suns and cows, but are abstract, usually representing the sounds of the words. While I can write John has three cows with a picture of a man alongside three bovines, I don't have an alphabet yet.

This might, of course, be completely and utterly wrong.

Edit: I spent three minutes on this post. Cynical got there first.

 

[Danicela]

Ye, writing is before alphabet :

You don't need alphabet to write symbols that mean each one something particular.

Alphabet is a more developped form of writing because you can use the same letters for several uses, not the symbols, alphabet is better.
You have 26 letters but X words, but you have X symbols for X words...
You need much more work to know to write with symbols.

 

[xonixs]

hieroglyphics symbols actually say sounds. I have recently seen a documentary about it in the tely.
But they also represent a drawing of something.

If they didnt say sounds, how then would we know how Ramses (son of the sungod) should be pronounced?

 

[MrCynical]

hieroglyphics symbols actually say sounds. I have recently seen a documentary about it in the tely.
But they also represent a drawing of something.

If they didnt say sounds, how then would we know how Ramses (son of the sungod) should be pronounced?

Yes, hieroglyphics aren't the best example of pictographic writing, as at least the relatively modern ones were essentially a phonetic alphabet. There are however some pictographic languages lacking in a genuine alphabet. It is also worth noting that most of the modern pronunciations of Egyptian names are essentially wrong, as has been discovered from comparison with contemporary references in other phonetic languages such as cuniform. Ramses should technically be pronounced something like "Riaamissa". You're quite correct that the more modern hieroglyphics represented sounds, but particularly the vowels are almost all pronounced wrongly in modern translations.

 

[zeeter]

Wow-it sounds like we actually came to an agreed upon conclusion in a Civfanatics thread!
It seems that we all agree. Even though heiroglyphics are not an alphabet, they are a form of writing and can thus be before the alphabet.

Incidentally, it was the Chinese who came up with the printing press before Gutenburg. They had pretty much built the thing, but encountered two problems. For whatever reason they decided to use wooden blocks instead of steel, even though they had a commanding lead worldwide in the casting of metals. The wooden blocks would deteriorate too quickly to be useful. Second reason, as noted here, chinese symbols each mean the words, so they'd need countless blocks on their printing press. With the alphabet one only needs 52 blocks for the letters (upper and lower), a bunch of characters for punctuation, and the numbers 0-9. Much simpler.

 

[cairo140]

Zeeter is right. Further, I agree with the conclusion drawn in this thread that the alphabet is indeed a MUCH more advanced version of writing.

The printing press was indeed reasonably effective in China due to the ability to block print (carving a text into a wood block). Indeed an effective moveable type has never been invented for Chinese, and that is what Gutenburg is credited to have genuinely invented - moveable type for the alphabet.

 

[cairo140]

I have often wondered how keyboards work in china. Dont they need thousands of keys?

Well there are two sorts of keyboards in China.

The former sort came before fast computers. Although Chinese is not phonetic and does not have an alphabet, each of the 100 000 common characters are made up of certain distinguishable comprising parts. Using a combination of these parts (albeit it is not easy because any given part can be written in certain orientations and certain sizes in certain places of the character), it is possible to construct nearly all Chinese characters.

The latter sort is the method used today. Through a process similar to romanization (the phonetic conversion of a foreign language to be spelled out with the English alphabet), all Chinese characters can be made to be "spelled out" so to speak. Using these constituent letters, anybody who knows how to pronounce a certain word can enter the phonetic pronounciation into a computer and select from an arranged list of characters that accord to that pronounciation. After a little practice, this method is extremely convenient and with familiarity can be faster than English typing.

* - Indeed it is possible to speak, read and write fluent "Chinese" without knowing a single character (by relying on Pinyin, the romanized version of Chinese) - the only reason people bother to memorize thousands of symbols is simply for the sake of tradition.

 

[Yva!n]

hieroglyphics symbols actually say sounds. I have recently seen a documentary about it in the tely.
But they also represent a drawing of something.

If they didnt say sounds, how then would we know how Ramses (son of the sungod) should be pronounced?

We know that because of a of a fortunate archeaological find, google the rosetta stone, for more info. A quick synopsis, iirc, the rosetta stone contains a inscription which had a big piece of identical text that was written in egyptian hieroglyths (which up to that time we could not read) and in ancient greek (which we could). The brainiacs could then use it like a big Jumble puzzle - to infer the rest of the egyptian writing.

 

[Older than Dirt]

The addition of Alphabet is merely a designer's attempt to replace something really significant such as Sanitation with a sillly ancient era tech.

 

[asylumlost]

is sanskrit considered an "alphabet"... if not it would be a good example of writing coming before alphabet

 

[Dusty4prez]

Well technically, neither of them should even be connected. You can have an alphabet with writing it down and you can have writing without an alphabet. You can say the alphabet but you don't have to write it down.

 

[Xanikk999]

Well technically, neither of them should even be connected. You can have an alphabet with writing it down and you can have writing without an alphabet. You can say the alphabet but you don't have to write it down.

Do you realize what your saying makes no sense?

An alphabet would be useless if it wasnt written down. What good is an alphabet that isnt for writing?

 

[zeeter]

Well technically, neither of them should even be connected. You can have an alphabet with writing it down and you can have writing without an alphabet. You can say the alphabet but you don't have to write it down.

The ONLY point to learning the alphabet and how to spell is to learn how to read. The only thing to read is writing and tea-leaves. Before writing there was no need for the alphabet. People just talked.

 

[Dusty4prez]

I know I'm just saying technically.