[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Artillery and sea units (PR#1476)

[Thanasis Kinias <tkinias@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

scripsit Ross W. Wetmore:
> At 03:12 PM 02/05/24 -0600, Richard Stallman wrote:
> >    There was no real proliferation of writing and written records until
> >    *after* there were standardized alphabets.
> >
> >The Sumerians did this with cuneiform, which was not alphabetic at
> >all.  (Signs in Sumerian stood for syllables or ideas.)  The Chinese
> >did it too.
> 
> Point taken, though I tend to have a broader definition of alphabet
> than just the Phoenician-based system.

There may be some confusion on this.  In case anyone isn't familiar with
linguistic terminology, an alphabet is a writing system where each glyph
represents one sound, or phoneme -- like /a/ or /t/.  If each glyph
represents a syllable, like /go/ or /ni/, the writing system is called a
syllabary; Japanese kana are the classical example.  If each glyph
represents a word or concept, like `middle' or `country', the glyphs are
called ideograms; the Han (Chinese) system (hanzi or kanji) are the
classical example.

The generic term for all these is `writing system'.  For naming the
Freeciv tech, however, just `Writing' would be fine.

(The above is very simplified, but roughly correct.)

-- 
Thanasis Kinias
Web Developer, Information Technology
Graduate Student, Department of History
Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona, U.S.A.

Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,
Ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul