kenney@cix.compulink.co.uk on Mon, 23 Jan 2012 03:06:17 -0600 typed in
soc.history.what-if the following:
>In article
><196e3782-552c-4053-bcdf-d4a8d9128896@hs8g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>,
>trolidous@go.com (troll) wrote:
>
>> that some of the Mongolians
>> might have been literate in a phonetic
>> alphabet prior to conquering China.
>
> Kublai Khan tried to introduce printing using the phonetic Mongolian
>alphabet, however this was only used for official documents and went out
>with the end of the Yuan Dynasty. I am not familiar with the modern
>Chinese system but it is believed in the books I have read to have
>originated as a character based system. However there was certainly a
>phonetic element in Egyptian hieroglyphic usually used for personal
>names.
My understanding is that Egyptian started as pictograms, and later
a phonetic form was developed using "Dog is for D" model.
The problem with Chinese going to a syllabify is that there are
mutually unintelligible versions of spoken Chinese, but use the same
written form. You couldn't talk to someone, but you could write them.
--
pyotr filipivich.
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