Writing - a system of signs created by people used to fix the sound of speech.The letter serves as an independent communication system having a number of specific functions.It gives the opportunity to receive and assimilate the knowledge and experience of previous generations, it expands the scope of human communication.Reading the literature, everyone gets a chance to touch the history of mankind, to comprehend their culture, external environment and the inner world.To overestimate the importance of writing is impossible today.Thanks to the person learns not only new things, first of all, he knows himself.
main features of written language lies in the fact that, unlike oral, it is not unfolding in time and static space.The letter allows the writing to think it, to return to an already written, change the words, rebuild the proposals to remove or replace the whole passages, clarify, seek the help of dictionaries and phrasebooks.
history goes back many thousands of years of writing, during which it gradually changed, improved, taking new forms.The appearance of the letters associated with the Sumerian civilization inhabiting five thousand years ago, the territory between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris.It is in these places, archaeologists find ancient monuments of writing - clay tablets with different images.These findings suggest that the written language was born 3,500 years BC
Many modern scientists are attempting to decipher ancient inscriptions, suggesting that they may contain information not only about the life and culture of the civilization whose members are their author, but also information about the appearance of humanity in general.
to the ancient forms of writing is pictography or picture writing.As you know, initially drawings were of great importance in the life of ancient people and displayed only at the moment of magic rituals.They then began to use them for the fixing and transmission of information.Known ancient Egyptian writing refers to logographic writing system ("Logos" - the word), the time of its birth is considered to 2-3 millennium BC
In his written speech formation has gone through several stages: from the cave paintings and clay tablets to the modern language, with its complex structures proposals, locutions, etc.Classification her quite diverse.Thus, according to one of them, humanity has the following kinds of types of writing:
- frazografiya - the oldest type of writing, transmitting information using special characters and descriptive signs without separation into individual words and phrases;
- logograph - letter transmitting information using the symbols representing the individual words;
- morfemografiya - writing, pass the word using morfemogramm - the special graphic characters;
- sillabografiya - syllabary, writing system associated with the division of words into separate syllables;
- phonography - graphic letter sound (not to be confused with the medical term for registration of heart murmurs).
According to another classification, the writing took place in its formation stages such as pre-written combining pictographs, primitive ideography and, in fact, a letter as we are used to seeing, or the phonograph.Phonograph includes the following types of writing: word-syllabic, syllabic and alphabetic.
Scientists now account for up to 5 thousand languages.In 1/3 of them has its own written language and literature.The most common letter is a contemporary Latin (she used about 40% of the total population).A quarter of all people on Earth are used in his writing Chinese characters.Cyrillic extended to 18% of the land area (including Russia).Different versions of Indian writing can be found in India, Nepal, Thailand and Laos.Writings of ethnic minorities are spread mainly in the provinces of China and some regions of Mongolia.
