Writing is a sign system created by people that is used to record sound speech. The letter acts as an independent communication system with a number of specific functions. It makes it possible to obtain and assimilate the knowledge and experience gained by previous generations, expanding the scope of human communication. Reading literature, everyone has the opportunity to touch the history of mankind, comprehend its culture, external environment and inner world. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of writing today. Thanks to her, a person learns not only a lot of new things, first of all, he knows himself.
The main features of writing are that, unlike oral, it unfolds not in temporary but in static space. The letter allows the writer to think through the speech, return to what has already been written, change words, rearrange sentences, delete or replace whole passages, clarify, seek help from phrase books and dictionaries.
The history of writing has many millennia, during which time it gradually changed, improved, and acquired new forms. The emergence of the letter is associated with the Sumerian civilization that inhabited the territory between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers five thousand years ago. It is in these places that archaeologists find the most ancient monuments of writing - clay tablets with various images. These findings give reason to believe that written speech originated in 3,500 BC.
Many modern scholars are making attempts to decipher the ancient inscriptions, believing that they can contain information not only about the life and culture of that civilization, whose representatives are their authors, but also information about the appearance of humanity as a whole.
Ancient types of writing include pictography, or picturesque writing. As you know, initially drawings were of great importance in the life of ancient people and were displayed only at the time of performing magic rituals. Then they began to use them to record and transmit information. The well-known ancient Egyptian writing system refers to the logographic system of writing (“logos” - the word), the time of its origin is considered to be 2-3 millennium BC.
In its formation, written speech went through several stages: from cave paintings and clay tablets to the modern language with its complex constructions of sentences, speech turns, etc. Its classifications are quite diverse. So, according to one of them, humanity has the following varieties of types of writing:
- phraseography - the oldest type of writing that conveys information using special characters and descriptive characters without dividing into individual words and phrases;
- logography - a letter that conveys information using characters that are separate words;
- morphemography - writing that conveys words using morphemograms - special graphic characters;
- syllabography - syllabic writing, writing related to the division of words into separate syllables;
- phonography - a graphic sound letter (not to be confused with the medical term denoting the registration of heart murmurs).
In accordance with another classification, writing went through such stages as prescriptiveness, combining pictography, primitive ideography and, in fact, writing, as we used to see it, or phonography. Phonography includes the following types of writing: verbal-syllable, syllable and alphabetic.
Scientists currently have up to 5 thousand languages. 1/3 of them have their own written language and literature. The most common modern letter is Latin (it is used by about 40% of the total population of the Earth). A quarter of all the inhabitants of the Earth use Chinese characters in their writing. Cyrillic is spread over 18% of the land area (including in Russia). Various versions of Indian writing can be found in India, Nepal, Thailand, Laos. The writing of ethnic minorities is distributed mainly in the provinces of China and certain regions of Mongolia.