Speech vs. Writing

1. Speech vs. Writing John Coleman

2. A message in Nɨpode Uitoto from Misael Morales, Dɨ́uenɨ (Tobacco people), Puerto Sabalo, Colombia

3. “Your young man arrived here where we live: we received him here. We truly want to know about our language so that we can teach our word to our children. It is true that the things I always wanted to write down could not be written. Well, we don’t know how, but you may know how we might do it well. If it is truly possible to write down our language, I want to know how this can be done. This is what we want to know, this is what we need. We need this word of ours. So perhaps you truly know how to do it this way; after all, you are the owners of the origin of writing.”

4. Most languages still have no writing Source: www.ethnologue.com

11. Writing is permanent

12. Speech is fleeting I am g o i ng t o      ɑ ŋ ə n ə 1/5 second = 66 metres

13. Some human vocalizations cannot be written

14. Speech is the world’s biggest electronic flow of information • Data from the Large Hadron Collider: • 15 Petabytes / year (= 15,000 laptop hard-drives) • Internet video & games (Netflix, Youtube etc.) • 3.9 Exabytes / year (~ 4 million hard-drives / year) • Speaking on the telephone:17.3 EB/year • All speech: ~400 Exabytes/year • = 400 million hard-drives / year

15. In short … • For most of human existence, language = speech • Most human languages are still unwritten • Writing is a relatively recent, special-purpose way of recording (some aspects of) language • Some bits of language just cannot be written • Speech is the largest flow of information • Speech, not writing, is the natural form of language

16. Thank you!

17. dub-sar eme-gi nu-mu-un-zu-a inim-bal-e me-da he-en-tum “a scribe who does not know Sumerian, what kind of a scribe is he?” eme-gi-she al-dugud eme-ni si nu-ub-sa “he is ‘heavy’ for Sumerian, he cannot move his tongue correctly” The school syllabus: • making clay tablets - using the stylus • learning the syllables - lists of names: gods, animals, etc, with Babylonian translations • Sumerian grammar • legal phraseology - letter-writing • music - mathematics and surveying • literature and poetry

18. Extract from Old Babylonian Grammatical Text I (c. 1600 BC) From section Ab, Demonstrative Pronouns Line Sumerian Babylonian translation English 317 lu-ne- ra a-na an-ni-i-im to this one 318 lu-ne- er a-na an-ni-i-im to this one 319 lu-ne- a a-na an-ni-i-im to this one 320 lu-ne- she a-na an-ni-i-im to this one 321 lu-ne-mesh- ra a-na an-nu-u-tim to these ones 322 lu-ne- she-am a-na an-ni-i-im-ma to this one only 323 lu-ne-mesh-she-am a-na an-nu-u-tim-ma to these ones only 324 lu-ne- a an-ni-a-am (to) this one 325 lu-ne- er an-ni-a-am (to) this one 326 lu-e- ra an-ni-a-am (to) this one 327 lu-e-mesh- a an-nu-u-tim (to) these ones 328 lu-ne-mesh- ra an-nu-u-tim (to) these ones 329 lu-ne- eri-me-a an-ni-a-am-ma (to) this one only 330 lu-e-mesh- rai-me-a an-nu-u-tim-ma (to) these ones only