A HISTORY OF SCIENCE

A brief analysis of speech sounds will aid us in understanding the real nature of the syllabary. Let us take for consideration the consonantal sound represented by the letter b. A moment’s consideration will make it clear that this sound enters into a large number of syllables. There are, for example, at least twenty vowel sounds in the English language, not to speak of certain digraphs; that is to say, each of the important vowels has from two to six sounds. Each of these vowel sounds may enter into combination with the b sound alone to form three syllables; as ba, ab, bal, be, eb, bel, etc. Thus there are at least sixty b-sound syllables. But this is not the end, for other consonantal sounds may be associated in the syllables in such combinations as bad, bed, bar, bark, cab, etc. As each of the other twenty odd consonantal sounds may enter into similar combinations, it is obvious that there are several hundreds of fundamental syllables to be taken into account in any syllabic system of writing. For each of these syllables a symbol must be set aside and held in reserve as the representative of that particular sound. A perfect syllabary, then, would require some hundred or more of symbols to represent b sounds alone; and since the sounds for c, d, f, and the rest are equally varied, the entire syllabary would run into thousands of characters, almost rivalling in complexity the Chinese system. But in practice the most perfect syllabary, Such as that of the Babylonians, fell short of this degree of precision through ignoring the minor shades of sound; just as our own alphabet is content to represent some thirty vowel sounds by five letters, ignoring the fact that a, for example, has really half a dozen distinct phonetic values. By such slurring of sounds

the syllabary is reduced far below its ideal limits; yet even so it retains three or four hundred characters.

In point of fact, such a work as Professor Delitzsch’s Assyrian Grammar[6] presents signs for three hundred and thirty-four syllables, together with sundry alternative signs and determinatives to tax the memory of the would-be reader of Assyrian. Let us take for example a few of the b sounds. It has been explained that the basis of the Assyrian written character is a simple wedge-shaped or arrow-head mark. Variously repeated and grouped, these marks make up the syllabic characters.

To learn some four hundred such signs as these was the task set, as an equivalent of learning the a b c’s, to any primer class in old Assyria in the long generations when that land was the culture Centre of the world. Nor was the task confined to the natives of Babylonia and Assyria alone. About the fifteenth century B.C., and probably for a long time before and after that period, the exceedingly complex syllabary of the Babylonians was the official means of communication throughout western Asia and between Asia and Egypt, as we know from the chance discovery of a collection of letters belonging to the Egyptian king Khun-aten, preserved at Tel-el-Amarna. In the time of Ramses the Great the Babylonian writing was in all probability considered by a majority of the most highly civilized people in the world to be the most perfect script practicable. Doubtless the average scribe of the time did not in the least realize the waste of energy involved in his labors, or ever suspect that there could be any better way of writing.

Yet the analysis of any one of these hundreds of syllables into its component phonetic elements–had any one been genius enough to make such analysis– ould have given the key to simpler and better things. But such an analysis was very hard to make, as the sequel shows. Nor is the utility of such an analysis self-evident, as the experience of the Egyptians proved. The vowel sound is so intimately linked with the consonant–the con-sonant, implying this intimate relation in its very name–that it seemed extremely difficult to give it individual recognition. To set off the mere labial beginning of the sound by itself, and to recognize it as an all-essential element of phonation, was the feat at which human intelligence so long balked. The germ of great things lay in that analysis. It was a process of simplification, and all art development is from the complex to the simple. Unfortunately, however, it did not seem a simplification, but rather quite the reverse. We may well suppose that the idea of wresting from the syllabary its secret of consonants and vowels, and giving to each consonantal sound a distinct sign, seemed a most cumbersome and embarrassing complication to the ancient scholars–that is to say, after the time arrived when any one gave such an idea expression. We can imagine them saying: “You will oblige us to use four signs instead of one to write such an elementary syllable as ‘bard,’

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *