Class February 9, 2009

At the start of class we were asked two questions... how writing benefited society and why alphabets were a good thing.  Writing benefited society by allowing records and documents to be kept and libraries were created, alphabets helped civilize people and made it easier for people to read and write.  We then discussed chapter 2, the Phaistos Disk, the Phoenician, Greek and Korean alphabets.  The Phoenician and Greek alphabets are similar to ours today, but the Egyptian's Hieroglyphics were also similar to the Phoenician alphabet.  The Phoenician's were seafaring merchants so their alphabet influenced anywhere they visited.  The Greek's alphabet, like the rest of Greece, was based off geometry.  The Greeks also changed 5 consonants to vowels.  The Korean alphabet was created to look like the shape of the mouth when the symbol was said. We also talked about the different substrates used. Clay was mainly used in Mesopotamia because they had a large amount of it and Egypt used papyrus because the papyrus plant could be found right along their rivers.  Codex parchment replaced papyrus for some people because they found it to be cheaper and more durable. Codex allowed for writing on both sides and it could be rolled up and folded with out breaking.  The Chinese invented paper but we have yet to learn about the Chinese.

I found it interesting to learn about serifs, when you choose fonts on the computer you

see fonts with serif in them and I never knew what that meant.

What was the significance of the Greeks changing 5 consonants to vowels?