WI: no alphabet

[Otto Kretschmer]

What if the alphabet is never created? The Semitic tribes never create the Proto Sinaitic script and all subsequent systems are butterflied away.

Provided Linear B is still forgotten how does w?riting develop in Europe

 

[Falecius]

A nearly alphabetic script may still emerge in Kush. IOTL it stayed there. ITTL it might find ways to fill an otherwise empty niche and spread, although it might find a stiffer competition as the Hellenes and the Canaanites would likely adapt a simplified script for themselves, either cuneiform or hieroglyph-derived.

 

[Oracle of Sobek 𓆋]

There's likely still going to be diffusion of scripts from West Asia and North Africa. That means Europe picks up some kind of semanto-phonetic tradition, either based on a mix of syllabic and logographic characters à la cuneiform or hieroglyphic Luwian, or the consonant-syllabic-logographic complex of hieroglyphic Egyptian.

If this still happens in Greece, I could see two parallel scripts developing: a more ornate hieroglyphic script (Egyptian or Luwian-derived) for public display, and "shorthand" script for more functional economic use like cuneiform or hieratic/demotic Egyptian. Of the cuneiform modes, I think the one with the best chance of filling this niche is Ugaritic - but that might depend on Ugarit itself surviving the Bronze Age Collapse.

There's a number of ways that e.g. the Greeks might use a West Asian/Egyptian script as a jumping off point rather than borrowing it more directly. Ugaritic or cuneiform stripped of logograms could be repurposed for Greek with some tweaks. Egyptian glyphs could even be repurposed for this, maybe by reanalyzing the multiliteral signs as consonant clusters rather than templates that can incorporate any permutation of vowels.

 

[Analytical Engine]

What if the alphabet is never created? The Semitic tribes never create the Proto Sinaitic script and all subsequent systems are butterflied away.

Provided Linear B is still forgotten how does w?riting develop in Europe

You asked variants of this question twice four months ago:

WI: No alphabet

Simply: Either the Proto Canannite script never comes to being or it comes but it never spreads to Phoenicia. Therefore, all the scripts derived from Phoenician are never createcd. How would writing systems develop? ITTL Linear B still dies out.

www.alternatehistory.com

AHC: No alphabet, abjad/abugida instead

The first alphabet was the Greek alphabet. It is the Phoenician abjad modified by turning several consonant letters into vowel letters. How would you modify the Greek writing system su that's it's either an abjad or an abugida? it still needs to come from Phoenician alphabet.

www.alternatehistory.com

 

[Otto Kretschmer]

Isnt alphabet going to be developed anew? It was developed only once as all alphabets come from Phoenician (Ge'ez and Hangul aside)

 

[Oracle of Sobek 𓆋]

Isnt alphabet going to be developed anew? It was developed only once as all alphabets come from Phoenician (Ge'ez and Hangul aside)

Ge'ez traces back to Phoenician via old South Arabian scripts, and Hangul was influenced by Mongolic scripts that also trace back to Phoenician.

It's totally possible that a "true alphabet" develops somewhere else... But that can't really be predicted with any certainty. The trajectories of Egyptian and Chinese scripts demonstrate that alphabets aren't an inevitability.

 

[Otto Kretschmer]

It is weird to me why the Egyptians never adopted the alphabet despite having some 2000 years to do so.

For Chinese it makes some sense because the language has an analytic morphology with a limited number of syllabes. Egyptian was fusional with triliteral roots so qn abjad makes sense

 

[The Professor]

It is weird to me why the Egyptians never adopted the alphabet despite having some 20

The Egyptians had a suite of alphabetic, syllabic, and logographic symbols in their writing. The formal system maintained all these but a more alphabetic/syllabic version became what's called hieratic.

 

[Falecius]

There's likely still going to be diffusion of scripts from West Asia and North Africa. That means Europe picks up some kind of semanto-phonetic tradition, either based on a mix of syllabic and logographic characters à la cuneiform or hieroglyphic Luwian, or the consonant-syllabic-logographic complex of hieroglyphic Egyptian.

If this still happens in Greece, I could see two parallel scripts developing: a more ornate hieroglyphic script (Egyptian or Luwian-derived) for public display, and "shorthand" script for more functional economic use like cuneiform or hieratic/demotic Egyptian. Of the cuneiform modes, I think the one with the best chance of filling this niche is Ugaritic - but that might depend on Ugarit itself surviving the Bronze Age Collapse.

There's a number of ways that e.g. the Greeks might use a West Asian/Egyptian script as a jumping off point rather than borrowing it more directly. Ugaritic or cuneiform stripped of logograms could be repurposed for Greek with some tweaks. Egyptian glyphs could even be repurposed for this, maybe by reanalyzing the multiliteral signs as consonant clusters rather than templates that can incorporate any permutation of vowels.

The OP however assumes that the Ugaritic cuneiform script does not exist.

 

[Falecius]

Isnt alphabet going to be developed anew? It was developed only once as all alphabets come from Phoenician (Ge'ez and Hangul aside)

Ge'ez derives from the Ancient South Arabian script, which in turn reflects a Linear tradition of abjad from the Levant parallel or derived from whatever the authors of Proto-Sinaitic graffiti where drawing from.

 

[Oracle of Sobek 𓆋]

It is weird to me why the Egyptians never adopted the alphabet despite having some 2000 years to do so.

For Chinese it makes some sense because the language has an analytic morphology with a limited number of syllabes. Egyptian was fusional with triliteral roots so qn abjad makes sense

They did adopt an alphabet though, that's what Coptic is.

The point of the hieroglyphic script wasn't ease of use, it was to express layers of metaphysical significance on top of the phonetic information. The complexity/playfulness was the point, which is why we eventually end up with "cryptographic" hieroglyphs in the Greco-Roman period (e.g. using two glyphs that look very similar in hieratic interchangeably in hieroglyphic script as a "pun"). When the religious and ideological foundation that maintained the utility of this script was undermined, an alphabet filled the gap.

Egyptian isn't purely an abjad by the way, and I'm not just talking about the logograms. From the Middle Kingdom onward, "group writing" emerges to write foreign names and loanwords; this works more like an alphasyllabary and in some cases behaves almost like Chinese characters (imagine writing "tomato" like "toe-may-toe" - that's one way that "group writing" can work). James P. Allen's latest (2020) analysis of Egyptian phonology also suggests that the character 𓇋 <ỉ> was originally a vowel indicator, and 𓅱 <w> a vowel about as frequently as a consonant.

 

[Falecius]

Ge'ez traces back to Phoenician via old South Arabian scripts, and Hangul was influenced by Mongolic scripts that also trace back to Phoenician.

It's totally possible that a "true alphabet" develops somewhere else... But that can't really be predicted with any certainty. The trajectories of Egyptian and Chinese scripts demonstrate that alphabets aren't an inevitability.

Just nitpicking: the Phoenician alphabet is not ancestral to the old Arabian ones (from which the Ethiopian abugidas come). Both derive from a common source in the Bronze Age Levant (or Canaanites in Egypt), a source also reflected in Ugaritic and Proto-Sinaitic writing systems.

 

[Oracle of Sobek 𓆋]

Just nitpicking: the Phoenician alphabet is not ancestral to the old Arabian ones (from which the Ethiopian abugidas come). Both derive from a common source in the Bronze Age Levant (or Canaanites in Egypt), a source also reflected in Ugaritic and Proto-Sinaitic writing systems.

Ah, thanks for clarifying. Either way, it's hieroglyphs all the way down!

Though I'm not convinced Ugaritic derives from Proto-Sinaitic. There's also the Byblos script to contend with... Who knows what was up with that.

 

[Falecius]

They did adopt an alphabet though, that's what Coptic is.

The point of the hieroglyphic script wasn't ease of use, it was to express layers of metaphysical significance on top of the phonetic information. The complexity/playfulness was the point, which is why we eventually end up with "cryptographic" hieroglyphs in the Greco-Roman period (e.g. using two glyphs that look very similar in hieratic interchangeably in hieroglyphic script as a "pun"). When the religious and ideological foundation that maintained the utility of this script was undermined, an alphabet filled the gap.

Egyptian isn't purely an abjad by the way, and I'm not just talking about the logograms. From the Middle Kingdom onward, "group writing" emerges to write foreign names and loanwords; this works more like an alphasyllabary and in some cases behaves almost like Chinese characters (imagine writing "tomato" like "toe-may-toe" - that's one way that "group writing" can work). James P. Allen's latest (2020) analysis of Egyptian phonology also suggests that the character 𓇋 <ỉ> was originally a vowel indicator, and 𓅱 <w> a vowel about as frequently as a consonant.

Now I absolutely have to see Allen's work.

Ah, thanks for clarifying. Either way, it's hieroglyphs all the way down!

Though I'm not convinced Ugaritic derives from Proto-Sinaitic. There's also the Byblos script to contend with... Who knows what was up with that.

The ultimate source are hieroglyphs, yes.
The derivation of Ugaritic from P-S is not firmly established indeed, and it was not exactly my claim either.
This is mainly because it is not very clear what the miners in Sinai where doing, or why. What the evidence DOES show, as far as I know, fairly clearly, is that the Ugaritic abjad had two variants, with different alphabetic orders. These orders look very similar, respectively, to the ones later attested for the Phoenician and Arabian abjads in the Iron Age. This strongly hints to Ugaritic being in the family.
The Byblos stuff is just embarrassing. It looks like vaguely familiar but, again as far as I know now, nobody can say exactly what the hell It was. Semiticists don't like to talk about that.

 

[Falecius]

By the way, @Oracle of Sobek 𓆋 , your remarks reminded me that I should have got updated about the Byblos script. I stumbled upon a fascinating recent study full of clever and sometimes very credible decipherment suggestions, which, however, seem to yield a reading in a strange-looking Akkadian-Canaanite mix which I don't think should be allowed to exist.

 

[Alex Zetsu]

Syllabaries are pretty useful.

Syllabary - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Japanese Hiragana uses 46 symbols for example and Linear B uses 187 or 87 depending on your count.

One would need separate symbols for "bag", "beg", "big", "bog", "bug", "bad", "bed", "bid", "bod", "bud", "bead", "bide", "bode" ... etc for English. There are over 10,000 syllables in English ignoring some syllables that don't appear in actual words but come from Latin renditions of proper names from other languages.

But pretty sure English wouldn't develop if Latin developed differently (which means no Norman French as we know it) instead we'd have languages that don't have 10,000 syllables. And even if languages did develop with over 1,000 syllables, a syllabary would be infinitely better than a cumbersome system where each word needs a new symbol.

You asked variants of this question twice four months ago:

Technically the post with the same title asked a more specific way of the alphabet not being created while this one is asking what if the alphabet didn't develop, regardless of the original event. In essence that post asked "What if A led to B" while this one asks "What if anything led to B." So it's not quite the same and while I'd say you should defiantly put the more specific question into the older thread if the general question was asked first, if the specific question was asked first and you asked if the general one should be rolled into the odder thread I'd say "maybe?" Even if he did consider using the older thread he probably ran into some idiotic rule of "nah, this post is old even though it's not even been three years so don't reply to it" or something so had to make a new one. Although I thought that rule on this site didn't apply if you made the original post.

 

[Oracle of Sobek 𓆋]

By the way, @Oracle of Sobek 𓆋 , your remarks reminded me that I should have got updated about the Byblos script. I stumbled upon a fascinating recent study full of clever and sometimes very credible decipherment suggestions, which, however, seem to yield a reading in a strange-looking Akkadian-Canaanite mix which I don't think should be allowed to exist.

I'd be interested in seeing this! Why shouldn't an Akkaidan-Canaanite mix exist though? Don't many of the Amarna Letters feature Akkadian with Canaanite quirks?

 

[Falecius]

I'd be interested in seeing this! Why shouldn't an Akkaidan-Canaanite mix exist though? Don't many of the Amarna Letters feature Akkadian with Canaanite quirks?

You'll find It on Academia searching for Byblos Script. The author is called Woudhuizen.
An Akkadian-Canaanite mix of sorts may easily exist and is, indeed, a good way to describe the language of the Amarna Letters, which is basically a peripheral variety of diplomatic Old Babylonian (IIRC) in the hands of Canaanite-speaking scribes. However, in the Amarna corpus this official Akkadian still comes across as a different language from what has been called Amarna Canaanite, which also appears in names and glosses with their own features. Something quite like Amarna Canaanite is indeed the vastly most reasonable assumption on the underlying language of the Byblos script.
This is not, however, what the proposed decipherment yields. A seemingly random mix of Akkadian and Canaanite features, with a widely Hurrian onomastic (not problematic in itself) and some ad hoc readings to fit known words in either language is... odd. Also, the Egyptian loanwords seem too... Egyptian in form. Indeed, this decipherment seems not to be accepted by scholars.

 

[Falecius]

Syllabaries are pretty useful.

Syllabary - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Japanese Hiragana uses 46 symbols for example and Linear B uses 187 or 87 depending on your count.

One would need separate symbols for "bag", "beg", "big", "bog", "bug", "bad", "bed", "bid", "bod", "bud", "bead", "bide", "bode" ... etc for English. There are over 10,000 syllables in English ignoring some syllables that don't appear in actual words but come from Latin renditions of proper names from other languages.

But pretty sure English wouldn't develop if Latin developed differently (which means no Norman French as we know it) instead we'd have languages that don't have 10,000 syllables. And even if languages did develop with over 1,000 syllables, a syllabary would be infinitely better than a cumbersome system where each word needs a new symbol.

Many sillabaries simplify things, for instance, by encoding syllabic codas (more rarely, onsets or rhymes) separately. English would still need a large inventory just because it has an unusually high number of possible syllabic nucleus types and few restrictions on syllabic structure and consonant clusters, but it would be doable. To be fair, English does a fairly poor job even with its real Life alphabetic system, and would need an unusually large sign inventory even if it used a phonetically accurate alphabetic script (of course, other solutions include diacritics or digraphs, but those can be, and are, used in syllabic systems too).

 

[Alex Zetsu]

To be fair, English does a fairly poor job even with its real Life alphabetic system,

There are some words you want to look at how they are spelled and just facepalm. I mean some are excusable when they originate from another language using the Latin script For example I just learned that in British English, the proper spelling of the last dynasty of Holy Roman Emperors was "Habsburg" because that's how the Habsburg rulers spelled their names (at least after the printing press, I'm told some documents from the 1300s days when the Habsurgs were just minor Swiss have different spellings some of the different spelling written by the same person) but Americans overtime just insisted on spelling it "Hapsburg" (which I assumed was correct) because that's how to spell it to try to maintain closest to pronunciation. As one guy said while the site was trying to say "did you mean Hapsburg" Americans are programed to spell it that way apparently.

John English's answer to Why is the house of Habsburg often spelled Hapsburg in English? - Quora

But while it makes some degree of sense for foreign loanwords (at least ones taken intact without some change like adding a syllable to make a good sounding echo for example) and proper names to be spelled by how they are original spelled, words that aren't loanwords or proper nouns should not do that?

How do you get the spelling of "Island" when it's pronounced "Iland"? And even worse, it actually was spelled "Iland" in the days of Henry II but by Shakespeare's time it was "Island"!