"Allen W. McDonnell" on Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:47:49
-0500 typed in soc.history.what-if the following:
>
>"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.
Even today, that apparently happens.
>
--
pyotr filipivich.
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