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language studies - events| c. 3400 BC | Sumeria | Cuneiform (wedge-shaped) writing is invented by the Sumerians at Uruk. Consisting initially of about 1,500 symbols it is first used to make inventories of goods and to record transactions on clay tablets. One of the earliest documents, the Standard Professions List, gives the titles of officials and professions arranged in hierarchical order. The cuneiform script is gradually improved over the next few centuries but knowledge of it is lost in the 2nd century BC with the development of papyrus and paper. The new technique influences the Egyptian development of hieroglyphics. | | c. 3100 BC | Egypt | The earliest form of Egyptian hieroglyphics (sacred carvings) appear. They are used until about AD 40. | | c. 2650 BC | Egypt | The Egyptian Books of Wisdom are written, using papyrus as a writing material. Written for religious instruction, one of them is credited to the Egyptian physician and architect Imhotep. | | 1450 BC–1400 BC | Crete | The Linear B script supersedes Linear A at Knossos, Crete. Linear B is an early form of Greek, and its adoption in Crete demonstrates Mycenaean domination there. It is not as flexible as current cuneiform or Egyptian hieroglyphics, and seems to have been used for administration purposes only, for example in accounting, ration issues, lists of personnel, tallies of tax receipts in kind. These documents (incised on clay but also probably written on papyrus) show signs of agricultural prosperity, particularly in the number of sheep. | | c. 1400 BC | Syria | An alphabet is developed in Ugarit, Syria, that consists of 30 characters. | | c. 1300 BC | China | The first Chinese writing appears. About 2,000 characters of three kinds – pictographs, ideograms, and phonograms – are used to make oracular inscriptions on bone and tortoise shell. | | c. 850 | Europe | Jewish immigrants in central Europe form a distinct cultural identity, the Ashkenazim. Their language, Yiddish, is a fusion of various middle-eastern languages and Germanic dialects. | | 1066 | England | With the Norman Conquest, Norman French becomes the language of the English court. Latin continues to be the language of the church and the law. | | c. 1100 | England | Old English, the common language of England, with strong roots in the Germanic languages of the early invaders, begins to be replaced by Middle English. Middle English embodies the Northern European origins of English, but is also starting to reflect the influence of Latin and Norman French. | | 1837 | Germany, Persia | The German teacher Georg Friedrich Grotefend publishes New Contributions to a Commentary on the Persepolitan Cuneiform Writing in which he deciphers Persian cuneiform script. | | 1857 | England, Mesopotamia | The British army officer Henry Creswicke Rawlinson deciphers the Mesopotamian cuneiform. | | 1887 | Poland | Polish philoligist Luwik Lejzer Zamenhof devises Esperanto: based on phonetic spelling and a very simple grammar, it becomes the most widely accepted of the artificial languages. He invents it as a way of combatting nationalism. | | 1902 | USA | The US National Education Association adopts simplified spellings for words such as altho, thru, catalog, program, thoro, and tho. Some of the changes become permanent, others fail to catch on. | | 1934 | | The German philosopher Rudolf Carnap publishes Logische Syntax der Sprache/The Logical Syntax of Language. |
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