this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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Linguistics

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Why was writing invented so few times throughout history? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 2 years ago by Kaladin_Stormblessed@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/linguistics@lemmy.ml
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From what I’ve seen, writing was independently invented somewhere between 3 to 6 times. With so many languages and linguistic communities, why have so few independently invented writing?

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[–] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Two relevant tidbits of info:

  1. When Sequoyah created the Cherokee writing system, he had to prove its usefulness to the Cherokee elders, in order to promote its adoption.
  2. Plenty societies had access to writing, but it was only used by a ruling elite and/or a cultural elite, with most of the population being illiterate.

Based on those two things, I think that the usefulness of writing only becomes useful for most people if they know how to write or have heavy contact with the ones that do it. I mean, you can remember most stuff just fine, and you can speak with other people, so what's the value of learning a weird system to put those words in material form? So it's one of those things that only appear rarely but, once it appears, it spreads fast.

[–] potpie@beehaw.org 2 points 2 years ago

Just to build on that, writing is only really useful if lots of people can do it. And the most obvious type of system, logographic, takes a lot of work to learn even after the work of developing it. So I can see how it would be a hard sell until you meet a culture that already uses it to great effect.