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Writing
The first pictographs were simple. A writer would draw an object like a fish or a broom to communicate to others. This system worked well in a simple society, but it would be difficult to describe abstract concepts such as justice or liberty in pictographs. Many Chinese people continue to use a pictographic system today, but the Chinese government has endorsed the Pinyin system of phonetic writing. Pinyin means “spelling sounds” in Chinese. Most Chinese keyboards translate Pinyin spelling to traditional Chinese characters on the screen. Eventually, most cultures developed phonetic writing systems where a symbol represents a sound rather than an object. English speaking people, agree that the symbols D-O-G refer to an animal. English, French, Spanish, German and Russian are examples of phonetic languages.
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To cite this page: |
Ancient Sumerian record keepers marked pictographic symbols in soft pieces of clay with a pointed reed. The clay tablets were then baked to make them hard. We call the Sumerian writing system cuneiform. Cuneiform means wedged shaped, because the marks in the clay were wedges.