History of Writing

by Mr. Boswell

How did writing start?

• Writing started with pictographs or pictograms

• These are images that look a lot like what they actually are in real life!

• They were the first emojis!

• They weren't perfect, you can only say so much with just pictograms

Pictographs to Syllabaries

• Many pictographic writings became more abstract over time.

• This mean they looked less like what they were supposed to represent.

• The symbol began to represent the sound of the word not just the word

Development of the Alphabet

• What is an alphabet?

• Alphabets have a symbol for each sound in a language. A makes an "ah" sound, B makes a "bee" sound.

• Some of these pictographic systems had individual sounds like Egyptian Hieroglyphics.

How the Alphabet was born

• Tribes from the Middle East used some Egyptian symbols as a basis for their writing system.

• They were known as the Phoenicians.

• They did not need symbols for vowels in their language.

Finally...an alphabet!

• The Ancient Greeks traded with the Phoenicians and adopted their letters to write Greek.

• Only problem? Phoenician didn't write their vowels.

• The Greeks used letters they didn't need and used those for vowels.

• Voila!