Bizarre things my mind conjures up

[SeniorCitizen]

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[Fireball]

Wrong type of shrooms on your pizza? 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Three New York Style to go, please.

[SeniorCitizen]

The Alphabet

Early on in a text book about the Alphabet it stated "The order of the letters is of no significance".

Well ...

A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H   I   J  K  L  M  N

O  P  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z

Q  R

This brings together the vowels (Y is often used as a vowel) and the voiced-voiceless consonants, BP, DT, and FV.

Interchanging C and Z and K and W creates the pairs ZS and GK. In some languages C is pronounced as "ch", so that JC is another pair,

After further juggling around I ended up with the arrangement:

     I  Y
     C  J
 Q  X  H  N
 W  K  G  M
  R  F   V  L
      U   E
      T   D
      S    Z
      P    B
      O   A

The consonants in I  C X K F U T S P O are voiceless

The consonants in  Y J H G V E D Z B A are voiced

It is my opinion that this alphabet existed as a written alphabet the letters of which were later given sounds. Mankind began writing before he could speak.

The original letters (in which the consonants were unvoiced when they were given sounds) were constructed from lines and curves:

The reason why the original consonants were unvoiced was because they had limited control over their vocalisations ... which were driven by instinct.  

I C X (two curves) K (a line and a curve) V (two lines) U (two curves) T (two lines) S (two curves) P (a line and a curve) P (two curves)

So who used this alphabet?

Neanderthal maybe?

They had brains as big as ours ... but their voluntary control of their breathing may have been such that had little in the way of complex vocal language.

The letters created by this system had meanings:

The construction of some modern words reflect these meanings.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Written words are representations of spoken words. The reverse would require Cro Magnon to be able to read and write before he could speak. Not even slightly likely. Sorry about your pet theory.

[arewethereyet]

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[arewethereyet]

Thread reopened.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Mankind began writing before he could speak.

There's a couple of lines of reasoning against this.

1) How did they agree on what the written symbols meant without using speech to make that agreement?

2) Dogs and other animals may be trained to understand, if not speak, language. This implies that the ability to understand spoken language is more primal than written language.

Written language has a documented history of perhaps 6,000 years or so. Do you think that H. Sapiens Sapiens, extant for at least 150,000 years before that time, didn't develop spoken language, given evidence from both the animal kingdom (because animals use understood vocalizations) and the evolution of both the hyoid bone and Broca's area?

Also, many native tribes from all over the world have or had no written alphabet, but most certainly have or had distinct spoken languages.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Our cats are extremely vocal, but rarely write anything. When they do, it's usually a threat.

Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Our cats are extremely vocal, but rarely write anything. When they do, it's usually a threat.

Boru

We have three indoor cats and three backyardigans. Concerts start shortly before meal time. And by "shortly" I mean 1/2 hour after the last meal time.