A history of alphabets from around the world
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A history of alphabets from around the world | |
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The Alphabet and Elements of Lettering by Frederic W. Goudy Chapter 1: The Beginnings of the Alphabet, page 3 A picture of an object, no matter how crude its draftsmanship, sufficed to explain its meaning at a glance; but an abstract idea, as of virtue, love, time, sickness, space, required symbolism to make the meaning clear. The picture of a bee might indicate kinship or industry; a roll of papyrus, knowledge; a house, home or residence; but to represent, by pictorial symbols, ideas in which metaphor was desired implied a good memory and a considerable power of association on the part of the reader. As the spoken language became richer in inflections, conjugations, etc., the words acquired tenses, moods, cases, etc., which could not be pictured at all. Symbols might suffice for finite heathenism, but they would not suffice for the spiritual and infinite; a new gannent in which to wrap the thoughts of men must be woven, the old proving too narrow to envelop the new expressions. A pictograph raised up two images in the mind: one seen that represented one not seen, that is, its allegorical sense. Advancing from a simple to a more complex condition, more thoughts to present, more distinctions to draw, required something more adequate than mere symbolism. Ambiguity would bring confusion and render the symbol unintelligible. To avoid this it was necessary to add a determinant or sign [ideogram] to indicate the special sense intended; but the ideas to be expressed constantly increased in number, while the characters that could be used pictorially were limited in their application - in fact, there were not enough symbols "to go round," even as today the range of human thoughts transcends the range of symbols, however wide it may be, which man has invented to express them. At this stage the system could as yet convey little more than the simplest facts; it was a stage at which the pictures told a simple story at a glance. Later, when the picture became representative not only of an object, but also of some attribute of it, it then became a symbol that conveyed an idea as well as recording a fact, the pictograph constituting then an ideogram. Ideographic writing came about through the increasing need for accuracy as well as expediency; and putting the principal part for the whole, or putting one thing for another, from some resemblance of qualities in the two, through constant use was to divert attention from the symbol and fix it on the significance of the thing presented. And by a further process of conventionalization the ideographs lost their ideographic character and assumed gradually the quality of syllabic signs, only then really representing sounds. Ideas are expressed by sentences made up of parts of speech for which no symbolism, no matter how ingenious, can entirely provide. This led naturally to the use of pictures of things of different sense having names with the same sounds - a sort of rebus writing possible in any language having words of the same sound but of different meanings. To illustrate: in English the pronoun'I' is pronounced like the word 'eye,' the word 'reign,' to rule, like the word 'rain.' The idea 'I reign' could easily be expressed in picture writing by using the pictographs for 'eye' and 'rain,' the ideogram thus becoming a phonogram and the writing phonetic. Or, to illustrate still further, the picture of a leaf would become the sign for the syllable 'leaf' wherever it might occur, and the picture of a bee would become the syllable 'be' the pictures together forming the word 'belief.' The picture of the bee would then cease to represent the insect and would represent only the syllable 'be,' and the picture of a leaf would no longer signify leaf or foliage; the pictures would have become purely phonetic symbols, expressing words as well as ideas, the next step in their evolution toward real writing. Continue to page 4 |
The Alphabet and Elements of Lettering by Frederic W. Goudy Introduction What Letters Are Letters in General The Development of the Roman Capital Letters Before Printing The National Hands The Development of Gothic The Beginnings of Types The Qualities of Lettering Some Practical Considerations Notes on the Plates |