The Myth of Alphabet
It is hardly unexpected that misconceptions regarding writing systems permeate our beliefs about language because writing has long been associated with magic and the unknown. Chinese and Egyptian writing systems were once thought to offer transcendent representations of ideas and things, and in the seventeenth century some attempts were made to create universal, philosophical writing systems using ideographs, which were based on the idea that ideographs could connect the mind to the external world. There were, however, phonetic marks embedded in Egyptian hieroglyphics to help decipher the language. Chinese characters are also a subject of myth in the West, although modern linguists now know that not every character creates an independent word as we think of words in English, but that approximately 90% of Chinese characters contain phonetic and semantic information.
Picture writing is counterbalanced by alphabetic writing's mythological supremacy in terms of philosophy and evolution. An evolutionary pattern is seen in the three basic types of writing systems, according to this account. Ideographic writing is the earliest form of written communication, in which each sign represents a single word or idea. After that comes the syllabary, where each written symbol represents a syllable, usually a mixture of sounds (as in early Semitic writing and in Japanese). As a final step, each letter symbolizes a distinct sound.
This myth is based on the idea that the alphabet is the inevitable result of the advent of writing or, expressed more simply, that last is best. The intricacy of ideographic systems is criticized by alphabetists. Illiteracy is frequent in China because the Chinese must learn thousands of symbols before they can read their literature. There are certain advantages to using syllabaries, but they still have at least twice as many visual elements to learn as alphabets and are typically seen as an intermediary and hence unsatisfactory form of communication, a stage in the writing process.
According to the myth, the alphabet is last and the Roman alphabet isn't the least. There is no guarantee that it will be the most efficient. It is unfortunate that many letters have more than one sound associated with them; certain letters are not uttered at all; and in some cases, we may even say that English verges on the logographic in BaRBQ and other cases. Despite the fact that English vowels and consonants may not be as tough to master as Chinese, it is apparent that our phonetic maze presents the student of English native speaker and second language learner with great trouble.
