Why didn't all societies adopt writing?

PhilippeO

Banned
Um, why aren't they? It'd be helpful if you could first define what language and writing are.

Um, you have to ask linguist for that.

my understanding, which totally amateur, "Symbol" is not writing. So thing like "traffic sign" is not considered writing. some hand signals like " open hand for stop " also not considered sign language. Also in my mind, based on totally unreliable boyhood novel, some indians which totally different language, had some basic "warning sign" put on the ground or "hand gesture" when two hunter accidentaly meeting, they not usually considered language.
 
It also requires knowing some cultural context. Some of the logographs might be rather obvious to a Mixtec or Mexica but would be extremely esoteric to the average westerner.
I sort of had that under conventions-do you mean things like showing flints coming out of a speech scroll to refer to "flinty speech"/showing a ruler seated on a reed mat to refer to them as a king or something I'm not picking up on altogether?
 
I think it's also worth noting that even in societies that did adopt writing, very few of the people in those societies were actually able to read and write. So even in societies where there was writing, most people got along just fine without it. Even in modern society, there are plenty of people who are functionally illiterate.

Even adopting someone else's writing system is an intensive process, and as has already been mentioned, those cultures that persisted in their illiteracy tended to live adjacent to civilizations with rather esoteric writing systems. Alphabets and syllabaries are definitely the easiest to learn, but even they have problems when they lack sounds the receiving culture uses.

Personally, I don't really get it myself. Virtually every culture uses drawings or carvings, and they frequently use these as mnemonic devices. It seems logically that they'd want to use these symbols to store more and more information. It just doesn't happen though.
 
I think it's also worth noting that even in societies that did adopt writing, very few of the people in those societies were actually able to read and write. So even in societies where there was writing, most people got along just fine without it. Even in modern society, there are plenty of people who are functionally illiterate.

Even adopting someone else's writing system is an intensive process, and as has already been mentioned, those cultures that persisted in their illiteracy tended to live adjacent to civilizations with rather esoteric writing systems. Alphabets and syllabaries are definitely the easiest to learn, but even they have problems when they lack sounds the receiving culture uses.

Personally, I don't really get it myself. Virtually every culture uses drawings or carvings, and they frequently use these as mnemonic devices. It seems logically that they'd want to use these symbols to store more and more information. It just doesn't happen though.
Hmm, literacy claims are always iffy-I know that there are arguments that have been introduced to cuneiform studies and are growing in popularity to suggest that we've been underestimating Mesopotamian literacy. And of course it's always dangerous to suggest that a logographic/logosyllabic system actually affects literacy rates, as the example of Chinese script attests. I would suggest that it's not so much being able to store information so much as needing to store information that does not lend itself easily to oral memorization(as for example, literature, poetry, or literary genres that can be fitted into either) or visual memnonics(assuming that's a useful category that is actually distinct from writing) that drives the adoption of writing.
 
I sort of had that under conventions-do you mean things like showing flints coming out of a speech scroll to refer to "flinty speech"/showing a ruler seated on a reed mat to refer to them as a king or something I'm not picking up on altogether?
You could have symbols like duck-billed heads standing in for Wind, though it also helps to know the language because they could also use certain logographs not for what the glyph actually represents but the sound it's supposed to make. And understanding cultural context helps to realize what things like flinty speech or a person sitting on a reed mat actually mean.
 
Hmm, literacy claims are always iffy-I know that there are arguments that have been introduced to cuneiform studies and are growing in popularity to suggest that we've been underestimating Mesopotamian literacy. And of course it's always dangerous to suggest that a logographic/logosyllabic system actually affects literacy rates, as the example of Chinese script attests. I would suggest that it's not so much being able to store information so much as needing to store information that does not lend itself easily to oral memorization(as for example, literature, poetry, or literary genres that can be fitted into either) or visual memnonics(assuming that's a useful category that is actually distinct from writing) that drives the adoption of writing.
We may underestimate ancient literacy rates, but they certainly didn't approach modern literacy rates in industrialized countries. My point is that writing is a skill that requires an investment of time and energy that even if societies with writing people can survive without. In a society without any writing, there's even less of a motivation to adopt it. As you say, oral techniques can store a considerable amount of information that can be passed on reliably enough over successive generations. Using tokens is also a handy way to keep track of numbers.

And while I certainly wouldn't claim that logographic systems negatively impact literacy rates within societies, I'd feel more comfortable suggesting that it has a negative impact on adoption by other societies. If we just looked at adoption as of 2013, alphabets and syllabaries would clearly have the advantage. But obviously forces beyond linguistics contributed heavily to that distribution. I'd be interested in seeing if there are studies looking at the difficulty of learning different writing systems for non-native users.
 
You could have symbols like duck-billed heads standing in for Wind, though it also helps to know the language because they could also use certain logographs not for what the glyph actually represents but the sound it's supposed to make. And understanding cultural context helps to realize what things like flinty speech or a person sitting on a reed mat actually mean.
That makes sense-is the duck-billed head the Wind sign in dates/names(as in 8 Wind)?
 
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