"pyotr filipivich" wrote in message
news:297rh7trp64mvffn0ne2u1m6hupf0tldjf@4ax.com...
> 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.
In that case I would say Written Chinese is a seperate language in its own
right wheras syllabaries and alphabets are just a translation of a spoken
language into a written form. It is like a 1000 AD priest from Scotland
meeting a 1000 AD priest from Romania and communicating in written Latin
because they have mutually unintelligable accents.
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