Written language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A written language is the representation of a language by means of a writing system.

Written language is an invention, whereas spoken language has evolved along with homo sapiens. Children will instinctively learn or create spoken (or gestural) languages. However, written language must be taught.

Written language always appears as a complement to a specific natural language (English, French, American Sign Language, etc.) and no purely written languages (with the exception of computer languages, which are not natural languages) exist. Nevertheless many extinct languages are in effect purely written, since the written form is all that survives.

Written languages often change much slower than the corresponding spoken languages. When one or more registers of a language comes to be strongly divergent from spoken language, the resulting situation is called diglossia. However, such diglossia is often considered as one between literary language and other registers, especially if the writing system reflects its pronunciation.

Native readers and writers of English are often unaware that the complexities of English spelling make written English a somewhat artificial construct. The traditional spelling of English, at least for inherited words, preserves a late Middle English phonology that is no one's speech dialect; the artificial preservation of this much earlier form of the language in writing might make much of what we write intelligible to Chaucer, even if we could not understand his speech. Tom McArthur suggests that it is at least arguable that written and spoken English have reached the stage that can be considered diglossia.

[edit] See also

• List of writing systems
• Literary language
• List of languages by first written accounts
• Writing
• History of writing
• History of writing ancient numbers