Verena’s Reviews > Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization > Status Update

Comparing word-level glosses of Mayan inscriptions (or old Chinese poetry, p. 203) to actual translations into English really doesn't tell you anything about these writing systems. If anything, it tells you something about the structures of these languages (and English!), but, uhh, not that the inscriptions are "gibberish".........

"Alphabet-users, like ourselves, do bit live in the same world as the literate Chinese [...] The absence of inflection, number, gender, and tense in Chinese speech encourages this style of imagistic poetic expression, as such features no doubt affect Chinese morality and politics." ??????????????? I'm sorry, wtf????

You are dunking on the Chinese writing system bc the phonetic components of most signs don't give you the *exact* pronunciation (just sth close to it) while writing this book in a standard English orthography......? 🤨

I'm sorry, but how is a random Chinese speaker not being able to understand a complicated text due to not knowing some of the characters (& words) so different from an English speaker not understanding a difficult text due to not knowing some of the words? 🤔

Powell's obsession over the Greek alphabet as the first truly successful writing system and his distaste for (and perhaps misunderstanding of?) the Chinese writing system seem, uhhh, wildly subjective

I think we have different definitions of "language" 🧐