Is Alphabetic Writing a Hoax?

Perhaps we should speak of collective self-deception rather than a hoax. If alphabetic writing is phony, then people who have a lot of experience with it know deep down that the alphabet doesn't function as advertised. However, sudden exposure of a deeply buried act of self-deception can be traumatic, so we should begin gradually with common sense and circumstantial evidence.

Common sense tells us that the number of letters in our alphabet is slightly more than two and a half times the number of Hindu-Arabic numerals. Obviously that’s not enough to express millions of different ideas. However, if we use a writing system that has thousands of different characters, then it is possible to express thousands of different ideas. This brings us to some circumstantial evidence. Americans who win prizes in math and science contests in many cases are able to read Chinese writing. That would be a strange coincidence were it not for the fact that when people say they are “reading” Chinese writing, they are actually reading, and reading is good exercise for the mind.

In contrast, when a monolingual English-speaking person says "I am reading", it's simply code language meaning "I am resting while holding some alphabetic gibberish in front of my face." Of course, with the modern atrophy of the body and mind, lots of things mean "I am resting." For example, "I am in transit" basically means "I am sitting and waiting to arrive at my destination." For Beethoven, transit meant the physical exertion of walking dozens of miles to attend a concert.

To us, it seems odd that Beethoven is famous only as a musician and not as an athlete. Compared to us, he was an athlete. If Beethoven had been sitting on a couch in his living room and Sarah Palin had appeared on TV, then he would have simply gotten up and turned off the TV. In contrast, we sit and listen unless we can find the remote control somewhere on the couch. However, even Sarah Palin sometimes says something intelligent, such as when she said that she reads "all" the newspapers. Given that alphabetic writing is in fact meaningless gibberish, there is no reason for Sarah Palin to distinguish between different newspapers. They are all the same. If she rests while directing her gaze at one newspaper, then for all practical purposes she "reads" them all.

Sometimes she went totally silly and acted as if anyone actually believes that the mechanism of linguistic representation by which we represent a thing is equivalent to the thing itself.

*>^<•• #!# _-_-() \"/ !!!

;)

:shrug:

^^^Garbage undeserving of a serious response.

The real difference is that Mandarin and related languages that use ideograms like Kanji are pictorially based, while English and lots of other languages have phonetically-based writing systems.

The 26 letters in the alphabet are a rough and messy representation of the phonemes we use when we speak. And we express all the ideas we have just fine with speech, do we not?

Gotta go, the game is on at 22.50 mtu.

between you and Glenn Beck.

I think you'd win.

seeing how many people you can suck in.

Sometimes, three letters and a punctuation mark are all you need.

:rofl:

since what you wrote is in alphabetic writing. What you wrote is meaningless gibberish.
I think we can all agree with that.

:kick:

So people would actually sit and listen to crap rather than get off the couch. I remember it well.

that 'ugh' is different than 'Ugh' is different than "UGH!" ?


This is 'hugh' !

01010011 01101111 00101100 00100000 01110111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101111 01110101 01100111 01101000 01110100 01110011 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01110011 01100101 00100000 01100011 01101111 01100100 01100101 00111111

Except for new readers and new words, we read just like the Chinese (or other Asiatic writing systems) ;that is to say, we don't really look at words as collections of letters, but when we read, we view them as pictures.

There's a lot of research into language acquisition (that's part of what Noam Chomsky is famous for, for example). Someday when you have a fvree afternoon. You may want to read up on it -- its really very interesting.

crazier than he is.

Alphabets are better for holographic memory storage.

I arusse you taht if an idepargohic laaugnge unewrednt tihs tpye of asube, it wluod be comtelpely unradaeble eevn to the msot proicifent redaer.