Re: THEORY: Idle question about variations

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On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 15:11:03 -0800
Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:

> [snip]
> as inconsequential. I wonder why that is? Why is it that the sounds
> of the vowels in "potato" are of utmost importance while the shapes
> of the glyphs in "potato" are of no consequence at all?
It's important to distinguish the language itself from the system in
which it is written.  Language is primarily a spoken (or signed)
phenomenon, whereas writing is simply a way of recording that.  There
are certainly people who are quite interested in the evolution of
writing systems and study them, whom I'd like to call graphologists,
but the writing system is always secondary to the spoken word.  As a
result, in looking to study the language, as opposed to the writing
system, the way it is written really doesn't matter except so far as it
might give clues to the pronunciation when a spoken utterance is
unobtainable (as with ancient languages).

Hope that helps.

- --
Mohan Sud
«C'est le temps que tu as perdu pour ta rose,
       qui fait ta rose si importante»
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