【英语时差8，16】书写简史

 Don: Oh, Yael, I just read the most beautiful poem. No wonder our ancestors developed writing--they probably wanted to treasure poetry for posterity¹.

Yael: Actually Don, writing was developed to keep track of more mundane² things, like money. For example, early empires like Sumer, in what is now Iraq, invented scripts so they could keep records for tax purposes.

D: That figures! So what were these ancient scripts like? Did Sumerians draw a cow to represent a cow, and so on? Or did they have an actual alphabet?

Y: Well, writing started out as concrete symbols that represented actual objects, but many of the things people wanted to record were difficult to draw. For example, the Sumerian word "ti" means "to give life to." But how do you draw that? So ancient scribes turned to puns. By coincidence, the Sumerian word for "arrow" also sounds like "ti," and so scribes used the arrow symbol to represent the phrase "to give life to." So written symbols became associated with syllables³.

D: So how did we end up with the alphabet?

Y: For languages like English, symbols that represent individual sounds are much more economical than symbols that represent whole syllables. With our 26 letters, which represent individual sounds, we can write any word in English. To do the same thing with symbols that represent syllables, we'd need about eight thousand signs.

D: I see your point.

Y: So here's a neat fact. The ancient Egyptian language, which was written with hieroglyphs⁴ representing whole words or syllables, also had an alphabet of 26 letters. Although their alphabet looks different, most authorities believe that our alphabet descends⁵ from this Egyptian invention.

1 posterity   

n.后裔，子孙，后代

参考例句：

• Few of his works will go down to posterity.他的作品没有几件会流传到后世。
• The names of those who died are recorded for posterity on a tablet at the back of the church.死者姓名都刻在教堂后面的一块石匾上以便后人铭记。

2 mundane   

adj.平凡的；尘世的；宇宙的

参考例句：

• I hope I can get an interesting job and not something mundane.我希望我可以得到的是一份有趣的工作，而不是一份平凡无奇的。
• I find it humorous sometimes that even the most mundane occurrences can have an impact on our awareness.我发现生活有时挺诙谐的，即使是最平凡的事情也能影响我们的感知。

3 syllables   

n.音节( syllable的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a word with two syllables 双音节单词
• 'No. But I'll swear it was a name of two syllables.' “想不起。不过我可以发誓，它有两个音节。” 来自英汉文学 - 双城记

4 hieroglyphs   

n.象形字（如古埃及等所用的）( hieroglyph的名词复数 )；秘密的或另有含意的书写符号

参考例句：

• Hieroglyphs are carved into the walls of the temple. 寺庙的墙壁上刻着象形文字。 来自辞典例句
• This paper discusses the fundamental distinctions between the hieroglyphs andforerunner of writing. 英汉象形文字的比较是建立在象形文字具体内涵的基础上。 来自互联网

5 descends   

v.下来( descend的第三人称单数 )；下去；下降；下斜

参考例句：

• This festival descends from a religious rite. 这个节日起源于宗教仪式。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The path descends steeply to the village. 小路陡直而下直到村子。 来自《简明英汉词典》