LL-L "Orthography" 2006.01.11 (06) [E]

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   L O W L A N D S - L * 11 January 2006 * Volume 06
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From: Paul Tatum <ptatum at blueyonder.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2006.01.11 (03) [E]

Ron wrote:

> So, to sum up, we tend to recognize words by "shape," no matter what the 
> writing system or spelling method is.  We recognize them because we 
> *know* them, don't need to analyze them everytime we see them.  

A case in point is Akkadian, which had a truly mind-boggling complex 
orthography. Nearly every sign could have several ideographic readings, 
as well as several syllabic readings. When it was first deciphered, the 
complexity led scholars to doubt that they had 'cracked' the system, and 
so they had a newly discovered text transcribed and translated 
independently by three experts in order to compare the results (which on 
the whole agreed with each other). For example, one sign as an ideogram 
had the meanings 'mountain' (read 'Sadu') or country ('matu') as an 
ideogram. It was used as a determinative before names of countries and 
mountains (determinatives show the semantic field the word they 
accompany belongs to). And as a syllabic sign, it had the readings kur, 
mat, Sat, nat, gin, etc. The key is that although an abstract 
description of the orthography is complex, in practice each word had a 
fairly standardised orthographical representation. The word 'matu' = 
'country' for example was written COUNTRY+ma+a+tu in the majority of 
cases, where COUNTRY represents the determinative. Ernst Doblhofer, 
"Voices in Stone", (Paladin, 1961, but a translation from German) has a 
good description of the decipherment and the workings of the system

Paul Tatum

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