Re: Evolution is not a fact

John Wilkins wrote:
TomS <TomS_member@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"On Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:44:12 -0400, in article
<d8dum5xspl.ln2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Cory Albrecht stated..."
Suzanne wrote, On 08/08/08 01:26 AM:
"Woland" <jerrydeon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:376b47f4-afd5-4c0c-a885-f01818d8c0c1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Aug 7, 4:22 pm, "Suzanne" <shil...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:,snip.> > Your
point?

<snip>
Akkadians, Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians all had
cuneiform writing, and apparently understood it, which
gives us the information that this gigantic group of
people had some kind of common language at one time.
Cuneiform likely began as picture writing, but eventually
certain things were dropped and then letters were formed
that were equivalent to the positions of the characters of
cuneiform that look like golf tees or nails in their shape.

Suzanne
No, you misunderstand the nature of cuneiform.
1) Sumerian is a language isolate. That means that as far as we can
tell, it was not related to the other languages of the same region.
2) Cuneiform can be used to write any language. Different languages
adopted it. This does not mean that they had a common language

I have not misunderstood cuneiform! It is the first known
written language. People took their knowledge of it with
Cuneiform is not a language, it is an alphabet. Or are you going to say
that English, Finnish and Karakalpak are all written in the Latin language?
[...snip...]

Cuneiform is a writing system, but it is not an alphabet.

In a broad sense, any writing system which has the general
form of wedge-shaped signs typically written in clay. Usually
each sign represents a word or syllable, not a phoneme (that
is, a "sound", which is what alphabets represent).

Which would make it a syllabary, like many modern scripts. I actually
think that is better than an alphabet because then there's no
mis-spelling. But alphabets started out as syllabaries.

There are various different cuneiforms. The latest ones are pure syllabaries (e.g. the Persian one on the Rosetta Stone). The earlier ones employ lots of ideograms and ridiculous amounts of redundancy (e.g. Sumerian). And of course you can misspell in any script, and quite easily in a highly redundant one.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Evolution is not a fact
    ... Cuneiform likely began as picture writing, ... Sumerian is a language isolate. ... Another example of a writing system is "alphabet". ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Evolution is not a fact
    ... Cuneiform likely began as picture writing, ... Sumerian is a language isolate. ... but it is not an alphabet. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Evolution is not a fact
    ... Cuneiform likely began as picture writing, ... Sumerian is a language isolate. ... but it is not an alphabet. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Evolution is not a fact
    ... Cuneiform likely began as picture writing, ... Sumerian is a language isolate. ... but it is not an alphabet. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Evolution is not a fact
    ... Cuneiform likely began as picture writing, ... Sumerian is a language isolate. ... but it is not an alphabet. ...
    (talk.origins)
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