Written speech, stages of writing development

Written speech is a system of signs created by people, used to fix sound speech. The letter acts as an independent communication system with a number of specific functions. It provides an opportunity to receive and assimilate the knowledge and experience accumulated by previous generations, expand the sphere of human communication. Reading the literature, everyone who wants can get an opportunity to touch the history of mankind, to comprehend its culture, external environment and inner peace. It is impossible to overestimate the significance of writing today. Thanks to her, a person learns not only a lot of new things, first of all, he learns himself.

The main features of written speech are that, unlike the oral one, it unfolds not in a temporal, but in a static space. The letter enables the writer to think through speech, go back to what has already been written, change words, rearrange sentences, delete or replace entire passages, clarify, apply for help to phrase books and dictionaries.

The history of the letter counts many millennia, during which it gradually changed, improved, and acquired new forms. The origin of the letter is connected with the Sumerian civilization, which inhabited the territory between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris 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 suggest that the written language originated in 3500 BC.

Many scholars of modern times are trying to decipher the old inscriptions, believing that they can contain information not only about the life and culture of the civilization whose representatives are their author, but also information about the appearance of mankind as a whole.

Ancient types of writing include pictography, or a drawing letter. As you know, initially the drawings were of great importance in the lives of ancient people and were only displayed when magic rituals were performed. Then they began to apply them for fixing and transferring information. The well-known ancient Egyptian writing refers to the logographic system of writing ("logos" - word), the time of its inception is considered to be 2-3 millennium BC.

In its development, written speech went through several stages: from cave paintings and clay tablets to modern language with its complex construction of sentences, verbal turns, etc. Its classifications are quite diverse. So, according to one of them, mankind has the following varieties of types of writing:

• Phraseography is the oldest type of letter that transmits information by means of special symbols and descriptive signs without separating it into separate words and phrases;
• Logography - a letter that transmits information with the help of symbols representing individual words;
• Morphomography - a script that transmits words with the help of morphograms - special graphic signs;
• Syllabography - syllabic writing, writing associated with the separation of words into separate syllables;
• Phonography is a graphic sound message (not to be confused with the medical term for recording heart murmurs).

According to another classification, the writing passed in its formation such stages as pre-writing, combining pictography, primitive ideography and, in fact, a letter, as we are accustomed to seeing it, or a phonograph. Phonography includes the following types of writing: verbal-syllabic, syllabic and literal.

Scientists currently number up to 5,000 languages. One third of them have their own written language and literature. The most common modern letter is the Latin alphabet (it is used by about 40% of the total population of the Earth). A quarter of all inhabitants of the Earth use Chinese characters in their writing. Cyrillic is common in 18% of the land area (including in Russia). Various variants of Indian script can be found in India, Nepal, Thailand, Laos. Writing of ethnic minorities is widespread mainly in the provinces of China and certain regions of Mongolia.