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Originally Posted by RWood
Enrichment reading recommendations are The Immense Journey by Loren Eiseley and The Silent Language by Ed Hall. Great books. Not required, just great related reading.
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Speaking personally, I'd make Hall's _The Silent Language_
required reading, and I'd add his _The Hidden Dimension_ and _Beyond Culture_ to the syllabus.
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All written languages evolved over time to meet the demands of the society that created them with the exception of Korean that was devised completely by one of their Kings.
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That can be considered an evolution, too. Prior to King Sejong, the Koreans used Chinese characters, and had developed three different systems for using Chinese characters to write Korean: Hyangchal, Gukyeol and Idu.
Hangul did not replace them entirely, and a fair number of Chinese characters can still be used in written Korean (though whether and how many appears to be a matter of debate in Korea.)
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Have you noticed what’s happening as we come forward in time?
At each change of Dominant Media, more and more people are involved in creating the content and that content is spread to an ever-widening audience. This is the key to Dominant Media. From here on it just gets faster, more people are involved at every stage, and the distribution gets wider and wider. A side benefit is that education levels rise, as more people are required at all levels.
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The key point for me is the velocity at which information propogates, and the rate of change that produces.
And I've seen a speculation that the complexity of the Chinese written language was a means of social control. It took a long and a lot of effort to master it, so only a relatively few could. Most folks simply couldn't afford the investment of time and money required. Nobles and wealthy merchants could send their kids to school to learn to read and write. Peasants couldn't - the kids were needed in the fields.
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Dennis