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Thursday, October 27, 2011

Miscellaneous Mesopotamia

While Sumerians wrote many things down, I couldn’t find anything to suggest that there have been journals, personal narratives, or philosophical musings recovered from this very early civilization. This suggests to me that writing was utilized at first in this society for necessities, and only be those wealthy and educated. This video, apparently from the Discovery Channel, addresses a lot of very interesting things about Sumerians and writing. It’s worth watching!

If Discovery Channel can be trusted, the stylus is actually a convenient and effective writing instrument. It has the necessary sharpness to be accurate in the soft clay, and is commonly and cheaply available. 
And this video just kind of caught my eye…



I had mentioned previously that I thought writing to have been clumsy and time consuming on cuneiform tablets. While certainly not as easy as typing, or jotting things out on paper with a pen, I do think that certain Sumerians probably became quite proficient. The stylus on wet clay combination seems much more efficient than writing on metal plates, though not quite as durable.
To simulate how those less familiar or skilled with the system must have felt, I asked some of my friends to write about their day using a maximum of 15 words, and with the opposite hand they are comfortable with. Here are the results:



I noticed that vocabulary was dumbed down a great deal. I didn't know whether to attribute the decrease to the word limit, or the awkwardness of the opposite hand. Did the Sumerians have a greater oral vocabulary? Or did they become proficient enough in their writing that there is no noticeable difference? After my research, I'm leaning toward the second of those two. There may have been other civilizations where difficulty of writing hindered them in this way, but cuneiform writing actually seems pretty doable. 
After this little experiment, I started wondering about the instruments we use for writing. Our complex pens and mechanical pencils are wonderful. I can’t take a test unless I have a mechanical pencil. Professor Burton shared a story in class about how he has a very specific pen he has to use, or else he’s not comfortable. So, how have writing instruments developed through history?
This link provides a concise summary of the development of the various writing instruments. Please ignore the obvious pitch for the “ringpen” at the end. Although, who knows, perhaps it will be the writing instrument of choice for the next generation.
            The more writing becomes accessible, and the more people can publish their writings, the more content will be available for consumption. This can be a blessing, and also can lead to a whole lot of junk material. But let's be grateful that the ease of typing (our most current form of written communication) allows us to write about written knowledge efficiently and effectively. In blog posts. Like this one. Ya!

5 comments:

  1. I suppose my bigger, more general question is this. Does how we write affect what we write? If so, in what way?

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  2. Thanks for the visual aids. They enhanced your post. I have been thinking about your question too and reflecting on how I write personally. For example: What is the difference between typing something and handwriting it? With typing, I can write faster, have the benefit of editing what I write, share it more easily, etc. However, this digital form of writing can be temporary. I didn't print many things I wrote on my computer from my freshman and sophomore year (notes, papers, a few journal entries, etc.)... my computer crashed unexpectedly one day. Now they are gone. Lost forever…

    Also is there a significant difference between cursive and print handwriting? Cursive seems to be going out of date as many states no longer teach it as part of their school curriculum. Does it matter how we write? Which style¬–type verses cursive or print handwriting– do you prefer and why?

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  3. I think you have excellent points here. I agree that the easiness of writing helps you write more in comparison to writing when its more difficult. For example, I have a journal that I write in by hand and I also keep a journal on my computer. In my hand written journal, I write only the very important things down in very few sentences, or else I just summarize, because it is tiring and hurts my hand. Where as in my "digital journal," I will go on for pages and pages exhausting a single subject, because I can.

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  4. In addition to how much we write, I think that our medium for writing also affects our language itself. If we have to engrave whatever we're writing into clay, metal, or stone, our language is going to be much more succinct. Maybe we'd use one character for one word instead of one letter. On the opposite hand, if we have a computer we're writing with, we don't have room for that many buttons, so one character would be a letter. Imagine how much more difficult it would be to develop a typing system with a language that uses word-symbols instead of letters!

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  5. Jared,responding to the last part of your comment, I know the Chinese have a typing system for their characters, however I'm unsure how out works and how difficult it is, but maybe that's something to look into :).

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