250 word summary

Orality and Literacy

[Note: I've drawn from Walter Ong's book, Orality and Literacy and "The Invention of Writing" in the Norton Anthology of World Literature (Shorter Edition), Vol 1]

Orality

· Language exists wherever humans exist, and it always exists as spoken and heard, or oral (Ong 7). Ong writes: "Indeed, language is so overwhelmingly oral that of all the many thousands of languages--possibly tens of thousands--spoken in the course of human history only around 106 have ever been committed to writing to a degree sufficient to have produced literature, and most have never been written at all" (Ong 7)

· Around 3,000 languages are spoken today, but only 78 have literature (Ong 7). The word "literature" comes from the Latin word for "letters" and is another way to say "writing" (Norton Anthology of World Literature 3; Ong 7)

· Some characteristics of oral storytelling: use of "stock phrases, traditional sayings, and proverbs" (Norton Anthology of World Literature 3)

· These characteristics indicate the importance of memorization in oral storytelling. Using stock phrases, etc makes remembering and retelling a story easier

· Stories told before the invention of writing are lost to us because there was no way to collect them... BUT these stories undoubtedly influenced early written texts (Norton Anthology of World Literature 4) 

Literacy

· Writing was not invented to tell stories --> "Earliest documents we have contain commercial, administrative, political, and legal information" (Norton Anthology of World Literature 4)

· Our textbook does not address non-Western systems of writing in this section, but other cultures had writing too. For example, Chinese writing dates back to around 1,200 BCE and Maya writing dates back to around 250 BCE

· Cuneiform: a system of writing used by Mesopotamian scribes around 3,000 BCE. It is characterized by wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets. Cuneiform was at first used for administrative purposes (lists of food, textiles, cattle, etc), but around 2,500 BCE it began to be used to preserve historical events and literature (Norton Anthology of World Literature 4).

( Cuneiform Tablet (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.  from British Museum)

· Hieroglyphic: a system of writing invented by the Egyptians around 3,000 BCE. It is a pictographic, meaning the signs are pictures representing real things, i.e. --> a picture of an ox (Norton Anthology of World Literature 5)

· The Egyptians also invented "more efficient" scripts called  hieratic (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.  and  demotic (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. scripts (Norton Anthology of World Literature 5)

(Hieroglyh (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. from British Museum)

· Phoenician Script: a system of writing invented by a Semitic trading people called the Phoenicians. It is comprised of "twenty-two simple signs for consonantal sounds" (Norton Anthology of World Literature 5). This system was easy to learn because it is an alphabet, or a system of letters or symbols that can be combined to make sounds

( Phoenician Alphabet (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.  from Ancient History Encyclopedia)

· Vowels: the Phoenician script did not have vowels. Around 900 BCE, the Greeks "adopted the Phoenician script for their own language" but adapted letters they didn't need, and designated them vowels (Norton Anthology of World Literature 5)

https://www.ancient.eu/image/173/

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/themes/writing/historic_writing.aspx

Watch

: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pa54hWROpQ&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWppk7-Mti4&feature=youtu.be