Writing Conventions

[DarthBrendo]

Do you wonder why some writing conventions are the way they are? Why does every new line of dialogue need a new line? Why do so many Western languages write right to left but Eastern languages left to right?

 

Or even the difference in the way particular aspects of writing differ across languages? Why does the use of masculine/feminine/neutral gender forms differ so much?

 

Well? Have you?

[Amidala Skywalker]

Yes, yes I have. For a while it was my job to think about stuff like that. Yay for being a linguistics major!!!

 

There are so many cool orthographic questions out there, and so many of them are tied with historical linguistics. I mean, English uses the Roman alphabet, and so do many others. This clearly points back to the Roman Empire forcing everyone to use their alphabet, or being the first ones to write down the invaded's language.

 

Nowadays, linguists use the International Phonetic Alphabet in most situations when they are writing down a new language for the first time. It is, interestingly, mostly Roman characters.

 

Man, I so wanted to do my honors thesis on a question relating to this. The language of Maltese, spoken in Malta, is a really neat language. It's a cool mix of English, Italian and other Romance languages, and yet they use the Arabic alphabet. It's really cool.

 

As for the more psychological side, there are a lot of neat questions, including a lot that haven't even been researched yet (which, in my opinion, was one of the best things about studying linguistics; even as an undergrad I got to do groundbreaking research that no one had ever looked into before). So to a lot of those questions, the question remains that we have no real idea, and that's awesome.

[DarthBrendo]

I had to do an intro linguistics course last semester. I enjoyed it, but it was tough. That stuff has never been my strong suit.

 

I'm curious as to why the Romans chose to write the way they did, as opposed to the ancient Egyptians, or the Arabian or Asian methods. The western languages are quite unattractive to look at, generally speaking, but some of the Arabian an Asian languages look really good. The art of calligraphy, from memory, comes from the Asian languages.

 

Anyone else have any thoughts or theories in this stuff?