Vortrag von William Boltz: Why no A-B-C? What ever happened to the alphabet in East Asia?

18. Juni 2019, von AAI Webmaster

Foto: William G. Boltz

Die Abteilung für Sprache und Kultur Chinas lädt herzlich ein zu einem Vortrag von William Boltz (University of Washington) am 18. Juni 2019 um 16:15 Uhr in Raum 120 des Asien-Afrika-Instituts ein:

“Why no A-B-C?”

What ever happened to the alphabet in East Asia?

With few exceptions all writing systems in the modern world come ultimately either from Egyptian or from Chinese. Those that come from Egyptian, having passed through a myriad of intermediate steps, typically ended up as alphabets (or abugidas, or abjads). Chinese writing started out pretty much the same way that Egyptian writing started and up to a point passed through some of the same intermediate steps as Egyptian and its descendants. In both cases the early graphs in the writing system carried meanings as well as sounds and were thus basically logographs. Because of differences in language structure, in historical contacts, in cultural predispositions and in how the writing systems represent their respective languages, Egyptian and Chinese writing diverged in the pattern of their evolution. At an early stage many of the graphs of Egyptian writing came to be used for sound only, having lost their inherent meaning. In Chinese writing this did not happen; the graphs maintained their semantic values as well as their sounds. This meant that the Chinese writing system never moved to a stage where the graphs had no meaning and thus never was in a position to take the form of an alphabet.