| # | Polity | Coded Value | Tags | Year(s) | Edit | Desc |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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"According to the Sanguo zhi [Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms], because Kebineng’s lands were near the Chinese border, many Chinese people (Zhongguo ren 中國人) fled the warlord depredations of late Han and Three Kingdoms China to join Kebineng, teaching the Xianbei how to make Chinese-style arms and armor, and even introducing some literacy. "
[1]
Kebineng’s reign started in 230 CE.
[1]: (Holcombe 2013, 7-8) |
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"According to the Sanguo zhi [Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms], because Kebineng’s lands were near the Chinese border, many Chinese people (Zhongguo ren 中國人) fled the warlord depredations of late Han and Three Kingdoms China to join Kebineng, teaching the Xianbei how to make Chinese-style arms and armor, and even introducing some literacy. "
[1]
Kebineng’s reign started in 230 CE.
[1]: (Holcombe 2013, 7-8) |
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The following quote implies that indigenous writing emerged in the region in the 19th century. "The first documented autochthonous, Mande script to appear in West Africa was the one created by Duala Bukere from Grand Cape Mount County in Liberia who created a Vai syllabary in 1833, which has been standardized to 212 characters (Dalby, 1967: 14-18). [...] Appearing first in the region, the Vai syllabary became the prototype for other writing systems that were created in the inter-wars among indigenous peoples in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Speakers of southern Mande languages such as the Mende (1921) and the Kpelle (1935), and speakers of the Kru languages such as the Bassa (1920-25) have based their writing systems on the syllabary (Dalby, 1967: 2-4)."
[1]
[1]: (Oyler 2001: 75) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/X7HQWWH9/collection. |
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The following quote implies that indigenous writing emerged in the region in the 19th century. "The first documented autochthonous, Mande script to appear in West Africa was the one created by Duala Bukere from Grand Cape Mount County in Liberia who created a Vai syllabary in 1833, which has been standardized to 212 characters (Dalby, 1967: 14-18). [...] Appearing first in the region, the Vai syllabary became the prototype for other writing systems that were created in the inter-wars among indigenous peoples in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Speakers of southern Mande languages such as the Mende (1921) and the Kpelle (1935), and speakers of the Kru languages such as the Bassa (1920-25) have based their writing systems on the syllabary (Dalby, 1967: 2-4)."
[1]
[1]: (Oyler 2001: 75) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/X7HQWWH9/collection. |
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SCCS variable 149 ’Writing and Records’ is coded as ‘1’ or ‘None’, not ‘Mnemonic devices’, or ‘Nonwritten records’, or ’True writing, no records’, or ‘True writing; records’ In Japanese schools, reading and writing was taught in Japanese rather than the native language: ’The chief subject in the prescribed elementary school curriculum was the Japanese language, spoken and written. Officially language work was supposed to occupy half of the teaching time; arithmetic about a quarter; and miscellaneous subjects, such as gymnastic exercises, singing, handicraft, ethics, and geography, the remainder. According to reports of students the actual emphasis on the Japanese language was if anything even greater than this. While the official curriculum prescribed the teaching of the more common Chinese ideographs as well as the Japanese Kana syllabary, [Page 85] few, if any, native students could be said to be literate in Japanese to the extent of being able to read a newspaper by the end of fifth grade. Certainly none could read the regulations promulgated by the South Seas Government Office; and these regulations were not translated, except sometimes orally and in summary by rather confused native interpreters.’
[1]
’The Japanese schools did not try to teach reading or writing in the native language, although some Trukese learned these skills from the Western Protestant and Catholic missionaries. Starting even before German rule, the missionaries had translated parts of the Bible and prepared hymns and other religious materials in Trukese, and continued to teach reading and writing in the native tongue to such children as would come to them.’
[2]
The Japanese administration was established in 1914, which we have adopted as a provisional date of transition.
[1]: Fischer, John L. 1961. “Japanese Schools For The Natives Of Truk, Caroline Islands”, 84 [2]: Fischer, John L. 1961. “Japanese Schools For The Natives Of Truk, Caroline Islands”, 85 |
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SCCS variable 149 ’Writing and Records’ is coded as ‘1’ or ‘None’, not ‘Mnemonic devices’, or ‘Nonwritten records’, or ’True writing, no records’, or ‘True writing; records’ In Japanese schools, reading and writing was taught in Japanese rather than the native language: ’The chief subject in the prescribed elementary school curriculum was the Japanese language, spoken and written. Officially language work was supposed to occupy half of the teaching time; arithmetic about a quarter; and miscellaneous subjects, such as gymnastic exercises, singing, handicraft, ethics, and geography, the remainder. According to reports of students the actual emphasis on the Japanese language was if anything even greater than this. While the official curriculum prescribed the teaching of the more common Chinese ideographs as well as the Japanese Kana syllabary, [Page 85] few, if any, native students could be said to be literate in Japanese to the extent of being able to read a newspaper by the end of fifth grade. Certainly none could read the regulations promulgated by the South Seas Government Office; and these regulations were not translated, except sometimes orally and in summary by rather confused native interpreters.’
[1]
’The Japanese schools did not try to teach reading or writing in the native language, although some Trukese learned these skills from the Western Protestant and Catholic missionaries. Starting even before German rule, the missionaries had translated parts of the Bible and prepared hymns and other religious materials in Trukese, and continued to teach reading and writing in the native tongue to such children as would come to them.’
[2]
The Japanese administration was established in 1914, which we have adopted as a provisional date of transition.
[1]: Fischer, John L. 1961. “Japanese Schools For The Natives Of Truk, Caroline Islands”, 84 [2]: Fischer, John L. 1961. “Japanese Schools For The Natives Of Truk, Caroline Islands”, 85 |
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French language.
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Chinese language
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Ancient Chinese language.
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Chinese alphabet
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Chinese.
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Ancient Chinese language.
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Ancient Chinese language.
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Chinese
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hieroglyphs
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hieroglyphs
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Hieroglyphs.
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hieroglyphs
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Hieroglyphs
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hieroglyphs
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Hieroglyphs
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hieroglyphs
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Hieroglyphs.
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hieroglyphs
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Hieroglyphs.
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No information found in sources so far.
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Akkadian cuneiform.
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"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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The earliest known written Japanese texts date to the eight century. Although the spoken languages have no relationship Chinese characters were borrowed to enable Japanese to be written ‘Over time the Japanese writing system developed into a complex use of Chinese characters along with two different phonetic scripts to represent the sounds of spoken Japanese. The two phonetic scripts—hiragana and katakana—represented the same sounds but were used in different contexts reflecting, among other things, class and gender.’
[1]
[1]: Deal, William E. 2005. Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan. Oxford University Press.p.242. |
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Unknown. "The emergence of writing is one of the indicators of civilization, and there is abundant evidence for this from early Shang sites. Inscribed symbols have been found mainly in phase III deposits at Zhengzhou (rank 1), Xiaoshuangqiao (rank 1), and Taixi (rank 2). Several symbols were found at Zhengzhou, as well as some resembling modern characters. These symbols were found mostly on dakou zun (大口尊 “large-mouthed” zun jars). In addition, some vessels from Xiaoshuangqiao have incised symbols under the rim. Some of these symbols seem similar to inscriptions on oracle bones from the late Shang period."
[1]
[1]: (Yuan 2013, 337) |
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Probably no written records
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"There are no written records of any description to throw light on the history of West Africa before 900 A.D."
[1]
"The West Africans who laid the foundations of their medieval empires during the centuries before 900 C.E. did not develop a written language they could use to record historical events."
[2]
Oldest example of writing in West Africa c1100 CE tomb inscription at Gao.
[3]
[1]: (Bovill 1958, 51) Bovill, E W. 1958/1995. The Golden Trade of the Moors. Oxford University Press. Oxford. [2]: (Conrad 2010, 13) Conrad, D. C. 2010. Empires of Medieval West Africa. Revised Edition. Chelsea House Publishers. New York. [3]: (Davidson 1998, 44) Davidson, Basil. 1998. West Africa Before the Colonial Era. Routledge. London. |
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Glyphs.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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Hieroglyphs.
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Hittite was an Indo-European language
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Arabic, Persian
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Arabic.
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Arabic.
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"None of the native peoples developed a system of writing comparable to that of the Mayas, and much less would the Spaniards encounter a native empire such as that of either the Aztecs or Incas. By 1500 A.D., the most advanced of the indigenous peoples were two Chibcha groups: the Taironas and the Muiscas."
[1]
[1]: (Hudson 2010, 5) |
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The earliest phonetic hieroglyphic writing was found in the tomb J at the Abytos Cemetary U - on the pottery vessels and small bone/ivory labels
[1]
. They are dated to Naqada IIIA. But it should be noticed that already in Naqada I, signs similar to hieroglyphs have been found, especially on the pottery vessels (pot marks). However "none of these signs hints at the existence of phonograms, phonetic complements or detenninatives" and "the absence of an important component of the hieroglyphic writing system does not allow us to designate these signs as "hieroglyphic writing""
[2]
. It can be rather treated as an abstract symbolic system
[3]
[1]: Köhler, E. C. "Theories of State Formation". [in:] Wendrich, W. [ed.]. Egyptian Archaeology. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing. pg: 41. [2]: Kahl, J. "Hieroglyphic Writing During the Fourth Millennium BC: an Analysis of Systems". Archeo-NiI 11 (2001); 122, 124. [3]: Meza, A. 2012. ANCIENT EGYPT BEFORE WRITING: From Markings to Hieroglyphs. Bloomington: Xlibris Corporation. pg: 25. |
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The following quote suggests that a Yoruba written alphabet was invented in the nineteenth century. "Àjàyí[...] returned in 1841 to the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra. Now officially known as Samuel Crowther, he [...] was the architect of Yorùbá modernization through his efforts as a linguist to reduce the Yorùbá language to writing, a major revolution in Yorùbá cultural and intellectual history. His accomplishments in this regard included the translation of the Bible into Yorùbá and the development of the first Yorùbá dictionary."
[1]
[1]: (Ogundiran 2020: 391) |
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The earliest phonetic hieroglyphic writing was found in the tomb J at the Abytos Cemetary U - on the pottery vessels and small bone/ivory labels
[1]
. They are dated to Naqada IIIA. But it should be noticed that already in Naqada I, signs similar to hieroglyphs have been found, especially on the pottery vessels (pot marks). However "none of these signs hints at the existence of phonograms, phonetic complements or detenninatives" and "the absence of an important component of the hieroglyphic writing system does not allow us to designate these signs as "hieroglyphic writing""
[2]
. It can be rather treated as an abstract symbolic system
[3]
[1]: Köhler, E. C. "Theories of State Formation". [in:] Wendrich, W. [ed.]. Egyptian Archaeology. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing. pg: 41. [2]: Kahl, J. "Hieroglyphic Writing During the Fourth Millennium BC: an Analysis of Systems". Archeo-NiI 11 (2001); 122, 124. [3]: Meza, A. 2012. ANCIENT EGYPT BEFORE WRITING: From Markings to Hieroglyphs. Bloomington: Xlibris Corporation. pg: 25. |
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|
"According to Jim Allen of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, such early hieroglyphs represent a rebus system, akin to modern Japanese, in which pictures are used according to the way they sound. In early phonetic systems phrases such as "I believe," for example, might be rendered with an eye, a bee, and a leaf."
[1]
[1]: http://archive.archaeology.org/9903/newsbriefs/egypt.html |
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SCCS variable 149 ’Writing and Records’ is coded as ‘1’ or ‘None’, not ‘Mnemonic devices’, or ‘Nonwritten records’, or ’True writing, no records’, or ‘True writing; records’.
|
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Sanskrit is an Indo-European language
[1]
[1]: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/sanskrit.htm |
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"Syllabaries were adapted to accommodate the characteristics of [Akkadian] (the voiced-unvoiced-emphatic triad, the use of long vowels and double consonants and so on)."
[1]
[1]: (Liverani 2014, 202) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy. London: Routledge. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/7DRZQS5Q/q/liverani. |
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Old Persian cuneiform is a semi-alphabetic (semisyllabic) cuneiform script that was the primary script for Old Persian. Texts written in this cuneiform have been found in Persepolis, Susa, Hamadan, Armenia, Romania (Gherla) and emerged around 515 BCE during the reign of Darius I and continuing on through the reign of his son, Xerxes I. Later kings down to Artaxerxes III used more recent forms of the language classified as "pre-Middle Persian".
[1]
[1]: Kuhrt, Amélie. 2013. The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period: Routledge. |
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"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
Liverani says the so-called "urban revolution" of the Uruk phase occurred 3800-3000 BCE.
[2]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. [2]: (Leverani 2014, 69-70) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
Liverani says the so-called "urban revolution" of the Uruk phase occurred 3800-3000 BCE.
[2]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. [2]: (Leverani 2014, 69-70) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
Liverani says the so-called "urban revolution" of the Uruk phase occurred 3800-3000 BCE.
[2]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. [2]: (Leverani 2014, 69-70) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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|
"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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|
"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
Liverani says the so-called "urban revolution" of the Uruk phase occurred 3800-3000 BCE.
[2]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. [2]: (Leverani 2014, 69-70) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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|
"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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|
The earliest known written Japanese texts date to the eight century. Although the spoken languages have no relationship Chinese characters were borrowed to enable Japanese to be written ‘Over time the Japanese writing system developed into a complex use of Chinese characters along with two different phonetic scripts to represent the sounds of spoken Japanese. The two phonetic scripts—hiragana and katakana—represented the same sounds but were used in different contexts reflecting, among other things, class and gender.’
[1]
[1]: Deal, William E. 2005. Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan. Oxford University Press.p.242. |
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|
"To all appearances, writing as such, in the form of Chinese Classics, was introduced into Japan early in the fifth century as part of the great cultural influx from Paekche."
[1]
"The earliest Japanese imperial chronicles, that is, the Kojiki and the Nihonshoki, were completed in AD 712 and 720, and included compilations of various historical records as well as ancestral legends dating back to ancient times"
[2]
[1]: (Frellesvig 2010, 11) [2]: (Mizoguchi 2013, 32) Mizoguchi, Koji. 2013. The Archaeology of Japan: From the Earliest Rice Farming Villages to the Rise of the State. Cambridge University Press. |
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Greek
|
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The earliest known written Japanese texts date to the eight century. Although the spoken languages have no relationship Chinese characters were borrowed to enable Japanese to be written ‘Over time the Japanese writing system developed into a complex use of Chinese characters along with two different phonetic scripts to represent the sounds of spoken Japanese. The two phonetic scripts—hiragana and katakana—represented the same sounds but were used in different contexts reflecting, among other things, class and gender.’
[1]
[1]: Deal, William E. 2005. Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan. Oxford University Press.p.242. |
||||||
|
The earliest known written Japanese texts date to the eight century. Although the spoken languages have no relationship Chinese characters were borrowed to enable Japanese to be written ‘Over time the Japanese writing system developed into a complex use of Chinese characters along with two different phonetic scripts to represent the sounds of spoken Japanese. The two phonetic scripts—hiragana and katakana—represented the same sounds but were used in different contexts reflecting, among other things, class and gender.’
[1]
[1]: Deal, William E. 2005. Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan. Oxford University Press.p.242. |
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The earliest known written Japanese texts date to the eight century. Although the spoken languages have no relationship Chinese characters were borrowed to enable Japanese to be written ‘Over time the Japanese writing system developed into a complex use of Chinese characters along with two different phonetic scripts to represent the sounds of spoken Japanese. The two phonetic scripts—hiragana and katakana—represented the same sounds but were used in different contexts reflecting, among other things, class and gender.’
[1]
[1]: Deal, William E. 2005. Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan. Oxford University Press.p.242. |
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|
"To all appearances, writing as such, in the form of Chinese Classics, was introduced into Japan early in the fifth century as part of the great cultural influx from Paekche."
[1]
"The earliest Japanese imperial chronicles, that is, the Kojiki and the Nihonshoki, were completed in AD 712 and 720, and included compilations of various historical records as well as ancestral legends dating back to ancient times"
[2]
[1]: (Frellesvig 2010, 11) [2]: (Mizoguchi 2013, 32) Mizoguchi, Koji. 2013. The Archaeology of Japan: From the Earliest Rice Farming Villages to the Rise of the State. Cambridge University Press. |
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|
The earliest known written Japanese texts date to the eight century. Although the spoken languages have no relationship Chinese characters were borrowed to enable Japanese to be written ‘Over time the Japanese writing system developed into a complex use of Chinese characters along with two different phonetic scripts to represent the sounds of spoken Japanese. The two phonetic scripts—hiragana and katakana—represented the same sounds but were used in different contexts reflecting, among other things, class and gender.’
[1]
[1]: Deal, William E. 2005. Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan. Oxford University Press.p.242. |
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|
"To all appearances, writing as such, in the form of Chinese Classics, was introduced into Japan early in the fifth century as part of the great cultural influx from Paekche."
[1]
However, ’now and then Chinese characters appeared on Yayoi pottery, showing a degree of literacy among craftsmen.’
[2]
[1]: (Frellesvig 2010, 11) [2]: Kidder Jr., J. Edward, 2007. Himiko and Japan’s Elusive Kingdom of Yamatai Honolulu: Hawaii University Press. p. 113 |
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|
"There are no written records of any description to throw light on the history of West Africa before 900 A.D."
[1]
"The West Africans who laid the foundations of their medieval empires during the centuries before 900 C.E. did not develop a written language they could use to record historical events."
[2]
Oldest example of writing in West Africa c1100 CE tomb inscription at Gao.
[3]
[1]: (Bovill 1958, 51) Bovill, E W. 1958/1995. The Golden Trade of the Moors. Oxford University Press. Oxford. [2]: (Conrad 2010, 13) Conrad, D. C. 2010. Empires of Medieval West Africa. Revised Edition. Chelsea House Publishers. New York. [3]: (Davidson 1998, 44) Davidson, Basil. 1998. West Africa Before the Colonial Era. Routledge. London. |
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|
"There are no written records of any description to throw light on the history of West Africa before 900 A.D."
[1]
"The West Africans who laid the foundations of their medieval empires during the centuries before 900 C.E. did not develop a written language they could use to record historical events."
[2]
Oldest example of writing in West Africa c1100 CE tomb inscription at Gao.
[3]
[1]: (Bovill 1958, 51) Bovill, E W. 1958/1995. The Golden Trade of the Moors. Oxford University Press. Oxford. [2]: (Conrad 2010, 13) Conrad, D. C. 2010. Empires of Medieval West Africa. Revised Edition. Chelsea House Publishers. New York. [3]: (Davidson 1998, 44) Davidson, Basil. 1998. West Africa Before the Colonial Era. Routledge. London. |
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|
"There are no written records of any description to throw light on the history of West Africa before 900 A.D."
[1]
"The West Africans who laid the foundations of their medieval empires during the centuries before 900 C.E. did not develop a written language they could use to record historical events."
[2]
Oldest example of writing in West Africa c1100 CE tomb inscription at Gao.
[3]
[1]: (Bovill 1958, 51) Bovill, E W. 1958/1995. The Golden Trade of the Moors. Oxford University Press. Oxford. [2]: (Conrad 2010, 13) Conrad, D. C. 2010. Empires of Medieval West Africa. Revised Edition. Chelsea House Publishers. New York. [3]: (Davidson 1998, 44) Davidson, Basil. 1998. West Africa Before the Colonial Era. Routledge. London. |
||||||
|
"There are no written records of any description to throw light on the history of West Africa before 900 A.D."
[1]
"The West Africans who laid the foundations of their medieval empires during the centuries before 900 C.E. did not develop a written language they could use to record historical events."
[2]
Oldest example of writing in West Africa c1100 CE tomb inscription at Gao.
[3]
[1]: (Bovill 1958, 51) Bovill, E W. 1958/1995. The Golden Trade of the Moors. Oxford University Press. Oxford. [2]: (Conrad 2010, 13) Conrad, D. C. 2010. Empires of Medieval West Africa. Revised Edition. Chelsea House Publishers. New York. [3]: (Davidson 1998, 44) Davidson, Basil. 1998. West Africa Before the Colonial Era. Routledge. London. |
||||||
|
"There are no written records of any description to throw light on the history of West Africa before 900 A.D."
[1]
"The West Africans who laid the foundations of their medieval empires during the centuries before 900 C.E. did not develop a written language they could use to record historical events."
[2]
Oldest example of writing in West Africa c1100 CE tomb inscription at Gao.
[3]
[1]: (Bovill 1958, 51) Bovill, E W. 1958/1995. The Golden Trade of the Moors. Oxford University Press. Oxford. [2]: (Conrad 2010, 13) Conrad, D. C. 2010. Empires of Medieval West Africa. Revised Edition. Chelsea House Publishers. New York. [3]: (Davidson 1998, 44) Davidson, Basil. 1998. West Africa Before the Colonial Era. Routledge. London. |
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|
The following quote suggests that a Yoruba written alphabet was invented in the nineteenth century. "Àjàyí[...] returned in 1841 to the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra. Now officially known as Samuel Crowther, he [...] was the architect of Yorùbá modernization through his efforts as a linguist to reduce the Yorùbá language to writing, a major revolution in Yorùbá cultural and intellectual history. His accomplishments in this regard included the translation of the Bible into Yorùbá and the development of the first Yorùbá dictionary."
[1]
[1]: (Ogundiran 2020: 391) |
||||||
|
"There are no written records of any description to throw light on the history of West Africa before 900 A.D."
[1]
"The West Africans who laid the foundations of their medieval empires during the centuries before 900 C.E. did not develop a written language they could use to record historical events."
[2]
Oldest example of writing in West Africa c1100 CE tomb inscription at Gao.
[3]
[1]: (Bovill 1958, 51) Bovill, E W. 1958/1995. The Golden Trade of the Moors. Oxford University Press. Oxford. [2]: (Conrad 2010, 13) Conrad, D. C. 2010. Empires of Medieval West Africa. Revised Edition. Chelsea House Publishers. New York. [3]: (Davidson 1998, 44) Davidson, Basil. 1998. West Africa Before the Colonial Era. Routledge. London. |
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|
“In Allada the local people, it was noted in 1670, in the absence of writing used knotted strings to keep records of various matters, including commercial transactions (“the price of goods”).”
[1]
[1]: Austin, Gareth, et al. “Credit, Currencies, and Culture: African Financial Institutions in Historical Perspective.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 34, no. 1, 2001, p. 144: 33. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SPXH2IUW/collection |
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|
"The inscriptions of the Orkhon, written in Turk in rune-type characters, contain a number of words not common to Turkic but with parallels in Samoyed or Ugric languages from which, directly or indirectly, they had to be borrowed."
[1]
"The First Turkic Khaganate officially split into the Western and the Eastern Turkic Khaganate. In the Eastern Turkic Khaganate, the Sogdian language and script was used for chancellery purposes and inscriptions."
[2]
[1]: (Sinor 1990, 291) [2]: (Hosszú 2012, 285) Hosszú, G. 2012. Heritage of Scribes: The Relation of Rovas Scripts to Eurasian Writing Systems. Rovas Foundation. |
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|
"The Khitan too developed a writing system on the Chinese model, though it was little used."
[1]
"In 920 the first Khitan script (the "large script," an adaptation of the Chinese script to the very different, highly inflected Khitan language) was presented, and by the end of A-pao-chi’s reign this script was widely used. In 925, when Uighur envoys visited the court, the emperor’s younger brother Tieh-la (whom A-pao-chi recognized as the most clever member of his family) was entrusted with their reception and, after learning their script (which was alphabetic), devised a second "small script" for Khitan."
[2]
[1]: (Beckwith 2009, 180) [2]: (Twitchett 1994, 67) |
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|
"Despite many problems in assessing the textual sources, archaeologists working on this period in the northern steppe zone are extremely fortunate to have historical accounts of the early nomads as seen through the eyes of state historians in China. Some textual information, no matter how problematic, is still better than none at all."
[1]
Note that Chinese written records do not count as records for the Xiongnu. "In several supercomplex chiefdoms the elite attempted to introduce written records (e.g. Hsiung-nu and Turks)",
[2]
but the use of the word ’attempted’ here seems to imply that they were unsuccessful. "the early steppe peoples would not have been a promising vehicle for the diffusion of complicated, textually based knowledge; according to the Northern Wei dynastic history, the Rouran were illiterates whose leaders at first kept records of their troop numbers by piling up sheep turds as counters but eventually graduated to scratching simple marks onto pieces of wood. Not surprisingly, there is no evidence of the transmission of Chinese military theories and texts to the West by way of the Avars, other steppe nomads, Silk Road caravans, or any other channel prior to the activities of the Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries."
[3]
[1]: (Honeychurch 2015, 223) [2]: (Kradin 2002, 373) [3]: (Graff 2016, 146) David A Graff. 2016. The Eurasian Way of War. Military practice in seventh-century China and Byzantium. Routledge. Abingdon. |
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Possehl states that there was no writing before the urban phase in the Indus valley.
[1]
While seals have been found in Mehrgarh III layers, these show no evidence of script or writing.
[2]
[1]: Gregory L. Possehl. The Indus Civilization. A Contemporary Perspective. Walnut Creek, Altamira, 2002, p. 51. [2]: , C. A. (in press) Chapter 11, Case Study: Mehrgarh. In, Barker, G and Goucher, C (eds.) Cambridge World History, Volume 2: A World with Agriculture, 12,000 BCE - 500 CE. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. |
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|
"The Indus civilization flourished for around five hundred to seven hundred years, and in the early second millennium it disintegrated. This collapse was marked by the disappearance of the features that had distinguished the Indus civilization from its predecessors: writing, city dwelling, some kind of central control, international trade, occupational specialization, and widely distributed standardized artifacts. [...] Writing was no longer used, though occasionally signs were scratched as graffiti on pottery."
[1]
[1]: (McIntosh 2008, 91-92) Jane McIntosh. 2008. The Ancient Indus Civilization. Oxford; Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio. |
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|
"Despite many problems in assessing the textual sources, archaeologists working on this period in the northern steppe zone are extremely fortunate to have historical accounts of the early nomads as seen through the eyes of state historians in China. Some textual information, no matter how problematic, is still better than none at all."
[1]
Note that Chinese written records do not count as records for the Xiongnu. "In several supercomplex chiefdoms the elite attempted to introduce written records (e.g. Hsiung-nu and Turks)",
[2]
but the use of the word ’attempted’ here seems to imply that they were unsuccessful. "the early steppe peoples would not have been a promising vehicle for the diffusion of complicated, textually based knowledge; according to the Northern Wei dynastic history, the Rouran were illiterates whose leaders at first kept records of their troop numbers by piling up sheep turds as counters but eventually graduated to scratching simple marks onto pieces of wood. Not surprisingly, there is no evidence of the transmission of Chinese military theories and texts to the West by way of the Avars, other steppe nomads, Silk Road caravans, or any other channel prior to the activities of the Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries."
[3]
[1]: (Honeychurch 2015, 223) [2]: (Kradin 2002, 373) [3]: (Graff 2016, 146) David A Graff. 2016. The Eurasian Way of War. Military practice in seventh-century China and Byzantium. Routledge. Abingdon. |
||||||
|
"There are no written records of any description to throw light on the history of West Africa before 900 A.D."
[1]
"The West Africans who laid the foundations of their medieval empires during the centuries before 900 C.E. did not develop a written language they could use to record historical events."
[2]
Oldest example of writing in West Africa c1100 CE tomb inscription at Gao.
[3]
[1]: (Bovill 1958, 51) Bovill, E W. 1958/1995. The Golden Trade of the Moors. Oxford University Press. Oxford. [2]: (Conrad 2010, 13) Conrad, D. C. 2010. Empires of Medieval West Africa. Revised Edition. Chelsea House Publishers. New York. [3]: (Davidson 1998, 44) Davidson, Basil. 1998. West Africa Before the Colonial Era. Routledge. London. |
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|
Glyphs dating to this period have been deciphered as either calendrical dates or the names of prisoners. Sources do not suggest that evidence for other types of writing has been found.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
||||||
|
Glyphs dating to this period have been deciphered as either calendrical dates or the names of prisoners. Sources do not suggest that evidence for other types of writing has been found.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
||||||
|
Glyphs dating to this period have been deciphered as either calendrical dates or the names of prisoners. Sources do not suggest that evidence for other types of writing has been found.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
||||||
|
Glyphs dating to this period have been deciphered as either calendrical dates or the names of prisoners. Sources do not suggest that evidence for other types of writing has been found.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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|
Glyphs.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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|
The first written records in the Valley of Oaxaca are from the Rosario phase (700-500 BCE).
[1]
[2]
Written records are therefore coded as absent for this period.
[1]: Flannery, K. V. and J. Marcus (1983). "The Cloud People." New York. [2]: Marcus, J. and K. V. Flannery (1996). Zapotec civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley, Thames and Hudson London. |
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|
The first written records in the Valley of Oaxaca are from the Rosario phase (700-500 BCE).
[1]
[2]
Written records are therefore coded as absent for this period.
[1]: Flannery, K. V. and J. Marcus (1983). "The Cloud People." New York. [2]: Marcus, J. and K. V. Flannery (1996). Zapotec civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley, Thames and Hudson London. |
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|
"South Arabian writing uses an alphabet of 29 consonants."
[1]
[1]: (Robin 2015: 99) Robin, Christian Julien. 2015. “Before Himyar: Epigraphic Evidence for the Kingdoms of South Arabia.” In Arabs and Empires before Islam, edited by Greg Fisher, 91-126. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seshat URL: https://www-oxfordscholarship-com.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199654529.001.0001/acprof-9780199654529-chapter-3. |
||||||
|
"South Arabian writing uses an alphabet of 29 consonants."
[1]
[1]: (Robin 2015: 99) Robin, Christian Julien. 2015. “Before Himyar: Epigraphic Evidence for the Kingdoms of South Arabia.” In Arabs and Empires before Islam, edited by Greg Fisher, 91-126. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/ZMFH42PE. |
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|
"South Arabian writing uses an alphabet of 29 consonants."
[1]
[1]: (Robin 2015: 99) Robin, Christian Julien. 2015. “Before Himyar: Epigraphic Evidence for the Kingdoms of South Arabia.” In Arabs and Empires before Islam, edited by Greg Fisher, 91-126. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seshat URL: https://www-oxfordscholarship-com.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199654529.001.0001/acprof-9780199654529-chapter-3. |
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|
“As Georg Bühler, whose groundbreaking Indian Palaeography was first published in 1896, observed ‘the great simplicity of the [Tamil] alphabet...is explained by the phonetics of the Tamil language’ (Bühler 1980: 93). Like the other Indian scripts the Tamil writing system is a syllabic alphabet. Its basic consonant signs (table 7.10) include the inherent vowel a. Other postconsonantal Vs are written with obligatory diacritics (table 7.11), while twelve independent signs are provided for initial Vs (table 7.12)”.
[1]
[1]: (Coulmas 2002, 140). Coulmas, Florian. 2002. Writing Systems An Introduction to Their Linguistic Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/7F5SEVNA/items/AHWVP84B/collection |
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|
“Sinhala has its own script. Its alphabet is known as hoodiya. Only Sinhala is written with the letters of the Sinhala hoodiya. The Sinhala writing system is largely phonetic in that one can understand how words are pronounced simply by looking at their spelling.”
[1]
[1]: (Chandralal 2010, 21) Chandralal, Dileep. 2010. Sinhala. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/7F5SEVNA/items/AC8BQ53V/collection |
||||||
|
“Yet another set of letters prevails there without corresponding phonetic values: Although Sinhala is considered notable among the major Indo-Aryan languages in having no aspirate stop phonemes (Coates & De Silva 1960), the written variety had preserved the symbols for aspiration in numerous words it has borrowed from Pali and Sanskrit.”
[1]
[1]: (Chandralal 2010, 22) Chandralal, Dileep. 2010. Sinhala. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/7F5SEVNA/items/AC8BQ53V/collection |
||||||
|
“As Georg Bühler, whose groundbreaking Indian Palaeography was first published in 1896, observed ‘the great simplicity of the [Tamil] alphabet...is explained by the phonetics of the Tamil language’ (Bühler 1980: 93). Like the other Indian scripts the Tamil writing system is a syllabic alphabet. Its basic consonant signs (table 7.10) include the inherent vowel a. Other postconsonantal Vs are written with obligatory diacritics (table 7.11), while twelve independent signs are provided for initial Vs (table 7.12)”.
[1]
“Yet another set of letters prevails there without corresponding phonetic values: Although Sinhala is considered notable among the major Indo-Aryan languages in having no aspirate stop phonemes (Coates & De Silva 1960), the written variety had preserved the symbols for aspiration in numerous words it has borrowed from Pali and Sanskrit.”
[2]
[1]: (Coulmas 2002, 140). Coulmas, Florian. 2002. Writing Systems An Introduction to Their Linguistic Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/7F5SEVNA/items/AHWVP84B/collection [2]: (Chandralal 2010, 22) Chandralal, Dileep. 2010. Sinhala. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/7F5SEVNA/items/AC8BQ53V/collection |
||||||
|
“Yet another set of letters prevails there without corresponding phonetic values: Although Sinhala is considered notable among the major Indo-Aryan languages in having no aspirate stop phonemes (Coates & De Silva 1960), the written variety had preserved the symbols for aspiration in numerous words it has borrowed from Pali and Sanskrit.”
[1]
[1]: (Chandralal 2010, 22) Chandralal, Dileep. 2010. Sinhala. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/7F5SEVNA/items/AC8BQ53V/collection |
||||||
|
“Yet another set of letters prevails there without corresponding phonetic values: Although Sinhala is considered notable among the major Indo-Aryan languages in having no aspirate stop phonemes (Coates & De Silva 1960), the written variety had preserved the symbols for aspiration in numerous words it has borrowed from Pali and Sanskrit.”
[1]
[1]: (Chandralal 2010, 22) Chandralal, Dileep. 2010. Sinhala. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/7F5SEVNA/items/AC8BQ53V/collection |
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|
The following quote suggests that a Yoruba written alphabet was invented in the nineteenth century. "Àjàyí[...] returned in 1841 to the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra. Now officially known as Samuel Crowther, he [...] was the architect of Yorùbá modernization through his efforts as a linguist to reduce the Yorùbá language to writing, a major revolution in Yorùbá cultural and intellectual history. His accomplishments in this regard included the translation of the Bible into Yorùbá and the development of the first Yorùbá dictionary."
[1]
[1]: (Ogundiran 2020: 391) |
||||||
|
The following quote suggests that a Yoruba written alphabet was invented in the nineteenth century. "Àjàyí[...] returned in 1841 to the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra. Now officially known as Samuel Crowther, he [...] was the architect of Yorùbá modernization through his efforts as a linguist to reduce the Yorùbá language to writing, a major revolution in Yorùbá cultural and intellectual history. His accomplishments in this regard included the translation of the Bible into Yorùbá and the development of the first Yorùbá dictionary."
[1]
[1]: (Ogundiran 2020: 391) |
||||||
|
The following quote suggests that a Yoruba written alphabet was invented in the nineteenth century. "Àjàyí[...] returned in 1841 to the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra. Now officially known as Samuel Crowther, he [...] was the architect of Yorùbá modernization through his efforts as a linguist to reduce the Yorùbá language to writing, a major revolution in Yorùbá cultural and intellectual history. His accomplishments in this regard included the translation of the Bible into Yorùbá and the development of the first Yorùbá dictionary."
[1]
[1]: (Ogundiran 2020: 391) |
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|
“The question as to the manner in which a record of the age of these children was kept by a people who had no writing, poses itself here.”
[1]
[1]: HERSKOVITS, M. J. (1932). POPULATION STATISTICS IN THE KINGDOM OF DAHOMEY. Human Biology, 4(2), 252–261: 258. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/8T74FM7D/collection |
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|
"Literacy entered Uganda for the first time with the introduction of Islam in the late 1860’s and for nearly a decade instruction in Islam was progressing and flourishing at the royal court. When literacy was introduced into the kingdom of Buganda, it was confined to speakers of Arabic and Kiswahili. "
[1]
Both Arabic an Kiswahili feature phonetic alphabets.
[1]: (Pawliková-Vilhanová 2014: 145) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/T7IMKZJJ. |
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|
"As we have seen, to secure their essential ties, the ancient states, lacking writing and money, relied on kinship, trust, and personal relationships, which were periodically rekindled by direct contact and exchanged words."
[1]
[1]: (Chrétien 2006: 178) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FXCVWDRI/collection. |
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|
"Literacy entered Uganda for the first time with the introduction of Islam in the late 1860’s and for nearly a decade instruction in Islam was progressing and flourishing at the royal court. When literacy was introduced into the kingdom of Buganda, it was confined to speakers of Arabic and Kiswahili. "
[1]
Both Arabic an Kiswahili feature phonetic alphabets.
[1]: (Pawliková-Vilhanová 2014: 145) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/T7IMKZJJ. |
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|
The following quote characterises the people of Tanganyika (the broader region of which Karagwe formed part) as "pre-literate" in the early 19th century. "We do not know what inland Tanganyikans believed in the early nineteenth century. They were pre-literate, and the religions of pre-literate peoples not only leave little historical evidence but are characteristically eclectic, mutable, and unsystematic."
[1]
[1]: (Iliffe 1979: 26) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SB2AJMVC/collection. |
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|
Languages spoken in this polity were turned into "written artefacts" only in the colonial period: "Before the arrival of the Europeans, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi were already employed in both kingdoms – Ikinyanduga in southern Rwanda and Ikiruundi in central Burundi – yet with a lot less linguistic unity in the two kingdoms than in (post)colonial times. The missionary and colonial interventions, therefore, rather focused on lexicon, resulting in status planning initiatives and contributing to the compilation of dictionaries, favouring a specific dialect over others. [...] The most salient and visible adaptations were a part of the primarily orthographic alignments of textualisation processes (turning languages into written artefacts)."
[1]
[1]: (Nassenstein 2019: 16-17) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/QUT3P5UT/collection. |
||||||
|
"Literacy entered Uganda for the first time with the introduction of Islam in the late 1860’s and for nearly a decade instruction in Islam was progressing and flourishing at the royal court. When literacy was introduced into the kingdom of Buganda, it was confined to speakers of Arabic and Kiswahili. "
[1]
Both Arabic an Kiswahili feature phonetic alphabets.
[1]: (Pawliková-Vilhanová 2014: 145) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/T7IMKZJJ. |
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|
Languages spoken in Rwanda were turned into "written artefacts" only in the colonial period: "Before the arrival of the Europeans, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi were already employed in both kingdoms – Ikinyanduga in southern Rwanda and Ikiruundi in central Burundi – yet with a lot less linguistic unity in the two kingdoms than in (post)colonial times. The missionary and colonial interventions, therefore, rather focused on lexicon, resulting in status planning initiatives and contributing to the compilation of dictionaries, favouring a specific dialect over others. [...] The most salient and visible adaptations were a part of the primarily orthographic alignments of textualisation processes (turning languages into written artefacts)."
[1]
[1]: (Nassenstein 2019: 16-17) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/QUT3P5UT/collection. |
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The following quote implies that indigenous writing emerged in the region in the 19th century. "The first documented autochthonous, Mande script to appear in West Africa was the one created by Duala Bukere from Grand Cape Mount County in Liberia who created a Vai syllabary in 1833, which has been standardized to 212 characters (Dalby, 1967: 14-18). [...] Appearing first in the region, the Vai syllabary became the prototype for other writing systems that were created in the inter-wars among indigenous peoples in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Speakers of southern Mande languages such as the Mende (1921) and the Kpelle (1935), and speakers of the Kru languages such as the Bassa (1920-25) have based their writing systems on the syllabary (Dalby, 1967: 2-4)."
[1]
[1]: (Oyler 2001: 75) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/X7HQWWH9/collection. |
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"As we have seen, to secure their essential ties, the ancient states, lacking writing and money, relied on kinship, trust, and personal relationships, which were periodically rekindled by direct contact and exchanged words."
[1]
Languages spoken in this polity were turned into "written artefacts" only in the colonial period: "Before the arrival of the Europeans, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi were already employed in both kingdoms – Ikinyanduga in southern Rwanda and Ikiruundi in central Burundi – yet with a lot less linguistic unity in the two kingdoms than in (post)colonial times. The missionary and colonial interventions, therefore, rather focused on lexicon, resulting in status planning initiatives and contributing to the compilation of dictionaries, favouring a specific dialect over others. [...] The most salient and visible adaptations were a part of the primarily orthographic alignments of textualisation processes (turning languages into written artefacts)."
[2]
[1]: (Chrétien 2006: 178) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FXCVWDRI/collection. [2]: (Nassenstein 2019: 16-17) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/QUT3P5UT/collection. |
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Languages spoken in Rwanda were turned into "written artefacts" only in the colonial period: "Before the arrival of the Europeans, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi were already employed in both kingdoms – Ikinyanduga in southern Rwanda and Ikiruundi in central Burundi – yet with a lot less linguistic unity in the two kingdoms than in (post)colonial times. The missionary and colonial interventions, therefore, rather focused on lexicon, resulting in status planning initiatives and contributing to the compilation of dictionaries, favouring a specific dialect over others. [...] The most salient and visible adaptations were a part of the primarily orthographic alignments of textualisation processes (turning languages into written artefacts)."
[1]
[1]: (Nassenstein 2019: 16-17) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/QUT3P5UT/collection. |
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Languages spoken in Rwanda were turned into "written artefacts" only in the colonial period: "Before the arrival of the Europeans, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi were already employed in both kingdoms – Ikinyanduga in southern Rwanda and Ikiruundi in central Burundi – yet with a lot less linguistic unity in the two kingdoms than in (post)colonial times. The missionary and colonial interventions, therefore, rather focused on lexicon, resulting in status planning initiatives and contributing to the compilation of dictionaries, favouring a specific dialect over others. [...] The most salient and visible adaptations were a part of the primarily orthographic alignments of textualisation processes (turning languages into written artefacts)."
[1]
[1]: (Nassenstein 2019: 16-17) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/QUT3P5UT/collection. |
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The following quote characterises the people of Tanganyika (the broader region of which the Fipa formed part) as "pre-literate" in the early 19th century. "We do not know what inland Tanganyikans believed in the early nineteenth century. They were pre-literate, and the religions of pre-literate peoples not only leave little historical evidence but are characteristically eclectic, mutable, and unsystematic."
[1]
[1]: (Iliffe 1979: 26) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SB2AJMVC/collection. |
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Languages spoken in Rwanda were turned into "written artefacts" only in the colonial period: "Before the arrival of the Europeans, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi were already employed in both kingdoms – Ikinyanduga in southern Rwanda and Ikiruundi in central Burundi – yet with a lot less linguistic unity in the two kingdoms than in (post)colonial times. The missionary and colonial interventions, therefore, rather focused on lexicon, resulting in status planning initiatives and contributing to the compilation of dictionaries, favouring a specific dialect over others. [...] The most salient and visible adaptations were a part of the primarily orthographic alignments of textualisation processes (turning languages into written artefacts)."
[1]
[1]: (Nassenstein 2019: 16-17) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/QUT3P5UT/collection. |
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"Literacy entered Uganda for the first time with the introduction of Islam in the late 1860’s and for nearly a decade instruction in Islam was progressing and flourishing at the royal court. When literacy was introduced into the kingdom of Buganda, it was confined to speakers of Arabic and Kiswahili. "
[1]
Both Arabic an Kiswahili feature phonetic alphabets.
[1]: (Pawliková-Vilhanová 2014: 145) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/T7IMKZJJ. |
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The following quote characterises the people of Tanganyika (the broader region of which Buhaya formed part) as "pre-literate" in the early 19th century. "We do not know what inland Tanganyikans believed in the early nineteenth century. They were pre-literate, and the religions of pre-literate peoples not only leave little historical evidence but are characteristically eclectic, mutable, and unsystematic."
[1]
[1]: (Iliffe 1979: 26) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SB2AJMVC/collection. |
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For the period up until the 18th century, judging from the sources, there is no evidence of writing of any kind in this polity. From the 18th century on, there is evidence for use of Ajami script, which, being derived from Arabic, is alphabetic (see first and second quotes). The first documented autochthonous writing system to emerge in the region first appeared in Liberia in 1821, outside of this polity, and the next to appear after that did so several decades after the collapse of the Kaabu state, in 1921 (see third quote). (1) "In southern Senegambia, where non-Manding populations predominated, Manding was a prestigious language of the pagan aristocracy and, on the other hand, the language of the Muslim merchant network of Jakhanke. The existence of Manding Ajami in that area was already attested in the first half of the 18th century (Labat 1728; cited by Giesing & Costa-Dias 2007: 63), long before the pagan rule of the ñàncoo elite of the Kaabu was definitely smashed by Muslim Fulbe troops from Fuuta Jalon. In any case, the emergence of Ajami is not related to the establishment of a Muslim political power in this area: the main holders of Islamic writing in the area, the Jakhanke merchants, were for centuries integrated into the social system of the Kaabu confederation and often served as advisers and intermediates for the political elites."
[1]
(2) "A number of terms have been used in this volume to refer to the usage of Arabic script for languages other than Arabic. Crosslinguistically, such writing systems are often termed ‘Arabic literature’, ‘Islamic literature’ or ‘Islamic writings’, and locally they are known by a large number of names, such as Wolofal, or Kiarabu. The term Ajami in particular (or variations, such as Äjam, Ajamiya, etc.), derived from the Arabic word ʿaǧam ‘non-Arab; Persian’, has gained some degree of popularity in academic literature and is also encountered as a self-denomination for these writing systems in some languages, such as Hausa."
[2]
(3) "The first documented autochthonous, Mande script to appear in West Africa was the one created by Duala Bukere from Grand Cape Mount County in Liberia who created a Vai syllabary in 1833, which has been standardized to 212 characters (Dalby, 1967: 14-18). [...] Appearing first in the region, the Vai syllabary became the prototype for other writing systems that were created in the inter-wars among indigenous peoples in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Speakers of southern Mande languages such as the Mende (1921) and the Kpelle (1935), and speakers of the Kru languages such as the Bassa (1920-25) have based their writing systems on the syllabary (Dalby, 1967: 2-4)."
[3]
[1]: (Vydrin 2014: 201-202) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/E8Z57DNC/collection. [2]: (Mumin and Verstegh 2014: 1) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/PVIK4HGV/collection. [3]: (Oyler 2001: 75) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/X7HQWWH9/collection. |
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"In the field of religion and culture, the nineteenth century is said to have witnessed the golden age of Islam in the Futa Jalon. It was the century of great scholars and the growth of Islamic culture. All the disciplines of the Quran were known and taught: translation, the hadiths, law, apologetics, the ancillary sciences such as grammar, rhetoric, literature, astronomy, local works in Pular and Arabic, and mysticism. Nineteenth-century European visitors were highly impressed by the extent of the Islamization, which was visible in the large number of mosques and schools at all levels, the degree of scholarship, the richness of the libraries, and the widespread practice of Islamic worship. All this seems to have been facilitated by the use of the local language, Pular, as a medium of teaching and popularization of Islamic rules and doctrine."
[1]
[1]: (Barry 2005: 539) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/SU25S5BX/items/6TXWGHAX/item-list |
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The following quote implies that indigenous writing emerged in the region in the 19th century. "The first documented autochthonous, Mande script to appear in West Africa was the one created by Duala Bukere from Grand Cape Mount County in Liberia who created a Vai syllabary in 1833, which has been standardized to 212 characters (Dalby, 1967: 14-18). [...] Appearing first in the region, the Vai syllabary became the prototype for other writing systems that were created in the inter-wars among indigenous peoples in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Speakers of southern Mande languages such as the Mende (1921) and the Kpelle (1935), and speakers of the Kru languages such as the Bassa (1920-25) have based their writing systems on the syllabary (Dalby, 1967: 2-4)."
[1]
[1]: (Oyler 2001: 75) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/X7HQWWH9/collection. |
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The following quote implies that indigenous writing emerged in the region in the 19th century. "The first documented autochthonous, Mande script to appear in West Africa was the one created by Duala Bukere from Grand Cape Mount County in Liberia who created a Vai syllabary in 1833, which has been standardized to 212 characters (Dalby, 1967: 14-18). [...] Appearing first in the region, the Vai syllabary became the prototype for other writing systems that were created in the inter-wars among indigenous peoples in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Speakers of southern Mande languages such as the Mende (1921) and the Kpelle (1935), and speakers of the Kru languages such as the Bassa (1920-25) have based their writing systems on the syllabary (Dalby, 1967: 2-4)."
[1]
[1]: (Oyler 2001: 75) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/X7HQWWH9/collection. |
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No writing system in Allada the year before Whydah became independent, so likely the same in Whydah: “Another question arising from the incidence of credit in both the local economy and the overseas trade is the nature of the indigenous system of recordkeeping. In Allada the local people, it was noted in 1670, in the absence of writing used knotted strings to keep records of various matters, including commercial transactions (“the price of goods”). Several later accounts allude to other mechanical devices for keeping financial (and fiscal) records in Dahomey.”
[1]
[1]: Austin, Gareth, et al. “Credit, Currencies, and Culture: African Financial Institutions in Historical Perspective.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 34, no. 1, 2001, p. 144: 33. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SPXH2IUW/collection |
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“Since the 17th century, Hausa has been written in a version of Arabic script called ajami that, like Arabic, is written and read left to right. Hausa is a tonal language, signifying that the meaning of a word depends on the high, medium, or low tone assigned to the vowels. The spellings of words, however, have not been standardized, and variations exist. Many of the written works in Hausa, especially prior to the mid-20th century, are based on Islamic themes.”
[1]
[1]: Falola, Toyin, and Ann Genova. Historical Dictionary of Nigeria. The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2009: 149. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SJAIVKDW/collection |
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No references found in the consulted literature to a written form of Nri that doesn’t use the Latin alphabet. “If these are the problems to be faced in languages that have written form hundreds of years ago one cannot imagine what problems there are in dealing with languages whose written forms are yet to be established.”
[1]
[1]: Onwuejeogwu, M. A. (1975). Some Fundamental Problems in the Application of Lexicostatistics in the Study of African Languages. Paideuma, 21, 6–17: 10. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/IISK3KCM/collection |
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“Since the 17th century, Hausa has been written in a version of Arabic script called ajami that, like Arabic, is written and read left to right. Hausa is a tonal language, signifying that the meaning of a word depends on the high, medium, or low tone assigned to the vowels. The spellings of words, however, have not been standardized, and variations exist. Many of the written works in Hausa, especially prior to the mid-20th century, are based on Islamic themes.”
[1]
[1]: Falola, Toyin, and Ann Genova. Historical Dictionary of Nigeria. The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2009: 149. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SJAIVKDW/collection |
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Written records began being kept from the seventh century.
[1]
Germanic runes were used by the Anglo-Saxon settlers. Letters based on Germanic runes were then incorporated into the Latin alphabet.
[2]
[1]: (Yorke 1990: 20) York, Barbara. 1990. Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203447307. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/YXTNCWJNs [2]: (Early Medieval: Networks’) ‘Early Medieval: Networks’, English Heritage. https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/story-of-england/early-medieval/networks/. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/IGSR3527 |
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“Since the end of the 15th century, a great deal of material about Benin has been supplied by sailors, traders, etc., returning to Europe. However, information on the Edo people before this date is very difficult to obtain, as there was no written record and the oral record is at best rather fragmentary.”
[1]
“The theme of this study presses the sources for the reconstruction of Benin military history to its limits because written documents scarcely exist, except for the reports and accounts of European visitors.”
[2]
[1]: Bondarenko, Dmitri M., and Peter M. Roese. ‘Benin Prehistory: The Origin and Settling down of the Edo’. Anthropos 94, no. 4/6 (1999): 542–52: 542. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/Y4V3D623/collection [2]: Osadolor, O. B. (2001). The Military System of Benin Kingdom, c.1440–1897. University of Hamburg, Germany: 27–28. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/N4RZF5H5/collection |
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“Although the ancient people of the Southwest didn’t have a written language, they had effective ways to communicate. Cultures worldwide have used rock art to transmit ideas and beliefs. There are two types of rock art, petroglyphs and pictographs.”
[1]
[1]: (“Chaco Culture - Communication”) “Chaco Culture” NPS Museum Collections, accessed May 8, 2023, https://www.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/chcu/index6.html. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/NMRVDA5I |
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Hieroglyphs. “Maya hieroglyphs present the reader with a richness and visual elaboration unrivalled by any of the world’s ancient scripts. The system as we know it today was evidently developed by the speakers of Ch’olan, one of the principal Mayan language groups, sometime in the Middle Preclassic.”
[1]
[1]: (Martin and Grube 2000: 11) Martin, Simon and Grube, Nikolai. 2000. Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens: Deciphering the Dynasties of the Ancient Maya. London; New York: Thames & Hudson. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/5WIIDVRJ |
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The English alphabet.
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Written records began being kept from the seventh century.
[1]
[2]
[1]: (Yorke 1990: 20) York, Barbara. 1990. Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203447307. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/YXTNCWJNs [2]: (Hills 1990: 47) Hills, Catherine. ‘Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England’, History Today, 1 October 1990, https://www.proquest.com/docview/1299029206/abstract/974AE2C925154DEBPQ/1. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/9P2MJSYJ |
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English.
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As the empire expanded, non-phonetic alphabets such as Hindi, Punjabi, Cantonese, Mandarin were introduced, though in no way adopted officially, however some ruling members of the colonies would encourage study of the local language.
[1]
[1]: (Marshall 2006: 130, 243, 248, 525) Marshall, P. J. ed. 2006. The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume II The Eighteenth Century. Vol. 2, 5 vols. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/HGG2PPQQ |
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As the empire expanded, non-phonetic alphabets such as Hindi, Punjabi, Cantonese, Mandarin were introduced, though in no way adopted officially, however some ruling members of the colonies would encourage study of the local language.
[1]
[1]: (Marshall 2006: 130, 243, 248, 525) Marshall, P. J. ed. 2006. The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume II The Eighteenth Century. Vol. 2, 5 vols. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/HGG2PPQQ |
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