1 - suddenly losing WRITING
OR
2 - suddenly losing SPEECH/LANGUAGE?
What I mean is if today, suddenly the world in her entirity lost all recognition of writing. We would not understand what all the materials were around us with writing on it. Books, signs, etc. Would we go about as a world community and attempt to decipher all this mysterious material around us? How would we do this? Would this bring the world closer or farther apart? What types of impact would this have? OR....
Similarly, if the world lost all ability to utilize speech. Speech, language, etc. We would just make gutteral sounds and the like and have no recollection of speech or meaninful sounds. All around us would be the remnants of language...television, music, etc, along with anything recorded (like the remnants in the writing example) but we would simply not at that point be able to grasp it. Would we go about as a world community and attempt to decipher all this mysterious material around us? How would we do this? Would this bring the world closer or farther apart? What types of impact would this have?
As for our intellect, that would still be intact however our PARTICULAR UNDERSTANDING OF either one of these issues would have simply vanished. BOTH would be difficult but not impossible to come back to and understand, given enough time.
Example, we would still somehow know how to drive MECHANICALLY, but we could not comprehane either the road signs or be able to understand RADIO communications or information screens. Would we continue to use such technological items surrounding us upon our discovery of this strange (new) world.
Originally posted by coentjeYou're right about that however...why could not writing have at some junction or by some alien or other intervention come first...before language. Language coming first is just how our civilization developed, right? I know what you're saying but...what if?
the second would be worse because it would automatically imply the first one to happen too.
If there is no language there can be no writing either because what would you write?
Even writing in symbols would require some kind of language to exist.
Originally posted by sword4damocleswriting come before language? Whithout language, what is there to write?
You're right about that however...why could not writing have at some junction or by some alien or other intervention come first...before language. Language coming first is just how our civilization developed, right? I know what you're saying but...what if?
Originally posted by cmsMasterYou can have writing withouth speech, that is true, it is harder though to have writing withouth language as was stated in the first post.
You can have writing without speech, the writing would probably be through symbols/pictures and would later evolve into speech, but the question posed is still valid.