Textualization and Phonetization in Early Near Eastern and Aegean Writing

Abstract Writing systems relate to language in a variety of different ways. While modern writers often expect writing to closely match the sounds of language, early writing operated on a different set of assumptions. Early cuneiform was divorced from the sounds and grammar of its underlying language. In the second millennium BCE , phonetic scripts developed in regions around the eastern Mediterranean. Part of this move towards phonetization was the earliest alphabet, which recorded only consonants. The alphabet was not stable, and it soon evolved the use of letters for vowels, a process finished by the Greeks. Representing the sounds of a language is not “better,” as it comes at a cost: writing that relates solely to the sounds does not relate to the meanings of the words represented, which makes reading more difficult. The internal history of writing systems is a back-and-forth between the pulls of phonetics and semantics.