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Etymology
- etymology, the history of a word or word element, including its origins and derivation.
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What is the origin of language?
The origin of language, its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences have been subjects of study for centuries.Scholars wishing to study the origins of language must draw inferences from evidence such as the fossil record, archaeological evidence, contemporary language diversity, studies of language acquisition, and comparisons between human language and systems of animal ...
- Mesopotamia & The Birth of Script
- Egyptian Hieroglyphics
- Chinese Scripts & Sanskrit
- Phoenicia, Greece, & Rome
- Conclusion
Script was first invented in Sumer c. 3500 BCE and revised c. 3200 BCE in the city of Uruk. Although the people of the Indus Valley Civilization (c. 7000-c. 600 BCE) are sometimes cited as the first, Indus scripthas not been deciphered, and the earliest inscriptions are dated to the middle or latter part of the Early Harappan Period (c. 5500-2800 B...
This same paradigm of the development of script is seen in other ancient cultures. In ancient Egypt, it was also invented to convey information on goods in long-distance trade. The earliest pictographic writing dates to the Predynastic Period in Egypt(c. 6000 to c. 3150 BCE) and had developed into hieroglyphic script by the Early Dynastic Period, a...
The association of the scribe with truth, with writing script as revealing and preserving truth, was a constant in other cultures as well. In China, the earliest script appears during the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BCE) around the year 1200 BCE through the use of oracle bonesin the practice of divination. Questions, in the form of pictographs, were c...
The ancient Greeks also used script early on to preserve their religious beliefs. The text known as The Room of the Chariot Tablets, the oldest known work written in Linear B script, dates to c. 1400-1200 BCE during the period of the Mycenaean Civilization (c. 1700-1100 BCE). The other early Greek script, Linear A script, remains undeciphered. The ...
Script has served to communicate the most profound, as well as the most practical, aspects of the human condition. From the simple need to communicate across distances, writing systems became the means by which people preserved past knowledge, great advances, disappointments and disasters, offering those in the present the possibility of learning f...
- Joshua J. Mark
Online Etymology Dictionary. This is a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English. Etymologies are not definitions; they're explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago. The dates beside a word indicate the earliest year for which there is a surviving written record of that word (in English, unless otherwise ...
Jul 3, 2019 · Updated on July 03, 2019. The etymology of a word refers to its origin and historical development: that is, its earliest known use, its transmission from one language to another, and its changes in form and meaning. Etymology is also the term for the branch of linguistics that studies word histories.
- Richard Nordquist
Although spoken language is believed to have developed tens of thousands of years ago, the written word emerged much later, as hunter-gatherers developed more permanent agrarian societies.
Jan 19, 2024 · The journey to discover who invented words unveils a complex, intertwined narrative of human evolution, cultural development, and cognitive advancement. From the earliest forms of communication in prehistoric times and ancient civilizations to the rich linguistic diversity of the modern era, language has been a pivotal element in human history.
Etymology, the history of a word or word element, including its origins and derivation. Although the etymologizing of proper names appears in the Old Testament and Plato dealt with etymology in his dialogue Cratylus, lack of knowledge of other languages and of the historical developments that.
