Evolution of written language.

How writing was formed is a very interesting process. It started with pictographs and worked its way up from there.  Accountants, to keep track of who paid whom what and who owed whom what, used the earliest form of record keeping and writing. Which makes sense if you think about it. There was no real need for it. It evolved from there mostly for political purposes. Messages and stuff like that. The kings and queens sending the messages didn’t know how to read or write them, so they had people called scribes who would write the messages, deliver them, and read them to their intended recipient. In some places scribes were very proud of their work. They saw themselves as superior because only they could read and know the things that had been written down. Religious leaders also knew how to read, because of the bible. When written language became more common, it was just symbols and pretty much had nothing to do with how things actually sounded when spoken. The first examples of phonetic language were when people’s names were written down. I think that is so cool. The fact that you can follow the evolution of language so well is awesome to me. Words are always something I have been interested in. I always wanted to take Latin to try to learn all the roots and origins of words, but unfortunately when I started taking my college foreign language credits, Latin was not offered. Some people were very opposed to the widespread use of written language, which is crazy to me. Today everything we do is in written language. Well, not everything, but a lot of things. We communicate through texting with our parents and friends, emailing our professors and bosses, keeping up with each other on social media. Its crazy how much people read on a day-to-day basis. It isn’t books that they are reading, but its definitely written word. And it all started with some drawings on a cave wall. That is so insanely cool .