Re: Old Languages

At 5:35 pm -0400 9/10/01, Amber Adams wrote:
>I know that's not the case for Modern Hindi, it uses spaces between words.
>
>But that's really interesting for Sanskrit... that system would work ok
>for reading out loud, but what about silently?  Or was it like a lot of
>other old written languages, where people just didn't read silently...?
How do we know they didn't?

That Classical Latin distinguished between _recitare_ "to read out aloud"
and _legere_ "to observe [a document], to peruse, to read" suggests to me
that people did at least read Latin silently 2000 years ago.  Indeed, the
original meaning of _legere_, which it still retained, was "to gather,
collect"; surely the metaphore was of a collecting & gathering the meaning
as one perused the words, i.e. a mental activity?

It's true that in post-Augustan Latin one will find _legere_ also used of
reading aloud; but the earlier distinction seems clear enough.

What is the evidence of other ancient languages?  What are the old written
languages where people just didn't read silently?  What is the evidence?

I'm not saying there is no evidence - I'm just curious as to what it is?

Ray.


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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                     [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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