Evidence suggests that written language evolved from business accounting records, and I suspect that other early applications were also formal in their flavor, for example religion and law. So capturing vernacular usages may not have been that big a deal.
On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 9:03 AM, Deepa Mohan <[email protected]> wrote: > To let the thread drift just a little, I feel that written language must > have evolved by "writing down the sound". How did languages evolve > non-phonetic scripts? > > > On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 9:21 PM, Thaths <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 7:54 AM, Meera <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > Which are the languages which have a huge disconnect between written > and > > > spoken versions? Like Tamil/thamizh... > > > And why do such languages evolve like that? > > > > > > > The wikipedia article on Diglossia < > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia > > > > > is a good starting place. > > > > Thaths > > -- > > Homer: Hey, what does this job pay? > > Carl: Nuthin'. > > Homer: D'oh! > > Carl: Unless you're crooked. > > Homer: Woo-hoo! > > > -- - Tim Bray (If you’d like to send me a private message, see https://keybase.io/timbray)
