jmm@bonnie.UUCP (Joe Mcghee) (07/26/84)
edai!ok says: > It seems most unlikely that the builders of Stonehenge wrote in Ogham. In "The Megalithic Odyssey" by Christian O'Brien we find the following: In ancient Celtic tradition there was a tribe known as the Tuatha De Danann meaning "tribes of the goddess Danu". In the "Leabhar na h'Uidre", an ancient text compiled in the christian era, they are described as a "race of knowledge". The date of their arrival in Ireland is commemorated as Beltaine and this event is stated to be the source of that holiday. Among The First Order (most noble citizens) of the Tuatha De Danann were: Ogma who became Ogmius the sun god to the continental Celts and was also known to them as the god of eloquence. He was said to have been skilled in dialects and poetry and was credited with the invention of the ancient Ogham alphabet. But his paramount importance to this study lies in two specially informative epithets: Ogma grian-aineach = "Ogma of the Sun-Countenance"; and Ogma grian-eiges = "Ogma of the Sun Learning". He was also frequently referred to as the "Sun Sage". Lugh Lamfhada (Lugh of the Long Arm) credited with the invention of metal-working. His feast is called Lughnasa. While I am not suggesting that these traditions should be interpreted in a strictly literal sense as far as Ogma and Lugh living in the same time period, the identification of this tribe with metalworking identifies these people as Celtic. (Refer to my previous article concerning the BBC program "Masters of Metal".) The identification of Ogham with this tribe also identifies them as Celtic and further their identification with "Sun Learning" identifies them as a people who knew a great deal about the movements of the sun. > Ogham has got to be the world's clumsiest alphabet, No, writing which uses glyphs such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, modern Japanese and Chinese ideograms are clumsier because a unique glyph must be created for each new word or idea. Even Arabic and Hebraic scripts which do not have vowels are clumsier. Ogham is phonetic and has vowels. > but as it was intended to conceal information & not to reveal it This appears to be a totally unsupported statement. Please state sources or show us your crystal ball. > I don't suppose the bards minded. It is basically an adaptation of the > Greek alphabet Again, this statement appears totally unsupported by references. Ditto. Ogham doesn't resemble Greek at all. It looks much more like Assyrian, Babylonian or Sumerian cuniaform. But these were pictographic forms of writing - not phonetic. > (with, if I recall correctly, a digamma), so it can't really be dated > any earlier than that (unless you want to claim that Celts invented the > Greek alphabet too...). Remember that the Greeks and Romans got their alphabets from the Phoenicians which is where the Celts probably got their alphabet, unless it was the other way around. > It uses different signs though. You bet it does! More to follow, J. M. McGhee bonnie!jmm
mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (07/28/84)
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> Ogham has got to be the world's clumsiest alphabet,
No, writing which uses glyphs such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, modern
Japanese and Chinese ideograms are clumsier because a unique glyph must be
created for each new word or idea. Even Arabic and Hebraic scripts which do
not have vowels are clumsier. Ogham is phonetic and has vowels.
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Elegance and phonetic exactness are not the same concept. In fact, one
could easily make an argument that a precise phonetic script is a very
clumsy one for an inflecting language or especially a language in which
root forms shift their sounds.
Egyptian hieroglyphics were a particularly elegant form of script,
containing information about the meaning, the syllabification, the
sound, and even sometimes the importance of the words. It may have
been one of the easiest of all scripts to read at one time. Certainly
there is only one script that has lasted longer, the "clumsy" Chinese.
(See my book "The Psychology of Reading", Academic Press, 1983, for
further argument on this question).
Japanese is a fully phonetic syllabary (in fact, two syllabaries),
which is justified by the simplicity of the Japanese syllable system.
They do use a set of 2-3000 Chinese ideographs for many content words,
but this is for convenience, not necessity.
Chinese characters are formed according to various rules (and art), so
that the construction of new ones is not as arbitrary as one might at
first expect. At the height of scholastic influence, there were as many
as 40,000 of them, some quite monstrous, but most of these are now considered
archaic. You should be aware that many, if not most, Chinese "words"
consist of more than one character, so that the conceptual meanings of
the constituent characters reinforce or cross to make the whole word.
I don't know anything about Ogham, but if bonnie!jmm knows as much
about it as he does about the writing systems that are currently popular
in the world, I'd take his statements with a grain of salt.
--
Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt