Texting like an Egyptian
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R u gng 2 pick me ↑ @ 4 4 driving lsns? My ss teach wants 2 talk 2 me @ my pp.
or
, but I hope
A new global language is being developed, inspired by “new media,” the surge in technology and the ubiquity of new symbols and images that have replaced traditional words.
Before the rise of the West, the most sophisticated civilization known to man began to convey written language through imagery. Which means every time one of my teenage daughters uses the icons and initialisms (those delightful “LOLs” and “TTYLs”) to express her thoughts, she is reviving the ancient Egyptian language system based on icons, pictures, and sounds.
While hieroglyphics may have run their course thousands of years ago, today there is a new visual language that is developing all around us. This development runs on two parallel tracks:
Phenomenon A: Abbreviation of the Language
By omitting vowels and by playing with letters and numbers to create different ways of evoking the same sound of a word, we are shortening our sentences and the original writing of our vocabulary. One example of this is the use of text messaging on mobile devices. The vowels are omitted and whole words are abbreviated, such as tonight (2nite) and after (aftr).
Phenomenon B: Iconology
The second phenomenon is the increased use of and exposure to icons in our daily lives. In the fast-paced world of advertising and marketing, new icons emerge every day.
The Egyptian Connection
We already take this new icon language for granted and seldom question its source or inspiration. The fact is that the whole methodology started with the ancient Egyptians – only they were not subject to cell phone bills.
They created a highly sophisticated method in which a picture could be read in four different ways.
Upon first reading, what you see is what you get, each icon represents its meaning. Thus if the image is a bird, the meaning also corresponds to “bird”. In the second, each icon represents only the sound of the word. Today, for example, something would translate as “4sale” instead of “for sale” or “B4″ instead of “before.”
The third included consistent alphabetical icon signs, in which each icon represents one letter. The fourth consisted of the ideogram, in which a group of icons represented a classified group of words that then represented a category itself, such as emotions, animals, people, places, and so on.
The ancient Egyptian read in four different ways, and this stimulated the mind with four different options to decipher the language: for example, one had to decipher whether they were reading icons that represented literal words (“bird”), sounds, metaphors or more.
How ironic is it that today, our language is evolving and following their steps.
Excerpted from an article by Galit Dayan PhD, Egyptologyst and Organizational Consultant for The Huffington Post
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