Cuneiform was a syllabic language. It had words and structure. It wasn’t just “impressions of ideas” like pictographs. (Source: Near Eastern Archaeology was quite literally my university major)
So in no way am I referring only to “alphabetic” languages as you seem to imply. And Cuneiform is included in what I was talking about…language. Whether that’s writing the epic of Gilgamesh or giving someone the worlds first bad yelp review.
Saying words didn’t exist until indo-european alphabets emerged is frankly ridiculous.
Saying that words didn’t exist before we had writing of any kind is risible.
Writing, in the end, is intended to reflect speech, not the other way around. Writing as an invention (even in ur-forms like cave paintings) was intended to provide a way of recording speech in ways that allowed later use of it.
Cuneiform was a syllabic language. It had words and structure. It wasn’t just “impressions of ideas” like pictographs. (Source: Near Eastern Archaeology was quite literally my university major)
So in no way am I referring only to “alphabetic” languages as you seem to imply. And Cuneiform is included in what I was talking about…language. Whether that’s writing the epic of Gilgamesh or giving someone the worlds first bad yelp review.
Saying words didn’t exist until indo-european alphabets emerged is frankly ridiculous.
Saying that words didn’t exist before we had writing of any kind is risible.
Writing, in the end, is intended to reflect speech, not the other way around. Writing as an invention (even in ur-forms like cave paintings) was intended to provide a way of recording speech in ways that allowed later use of it.