Writing date

Writing history Stephen Roger Fischer Abu Dhabi Center for Arabic Language Recently issued from the "Kalimah" project for translation at the Abu Dhabi Center for the Arabic Language, a book: "Writing History," by the author Stephen Roger Fischer, translated into Arabic by Rasha Salah Al-Dakhakhni, and reviewed by Mohamed Fathi Khadr. This book offers a useful preliminary reading for university students, and others who seek to obtain a general and modern overview of the wonderful history of writing. The core topics of this book include the origins of the main writing systems used around the world, their texts, forms, roles, and the temporal changes that have occurred to them. Fischer discusses the social dynamics of writing at each stage, from the appearance of upright humans, it seems that humans distinguished themselves from other creatures through forming human societies based on speech, and now what distinguishes the rational human in the modern era is a global community primarily based on writing. In the past, writing was a specialized field practiced by a few thousand people, but today, writing is considered a skill practiced by about 85 percent of the world’s population, that is about five billion people. The entire modern society relies on the foundation of writing. Now, most of the writing systems and scripts that existed in ancient times have become extinct, and only faint traces remain of the oldest writing system—the Egyptian hieroglyphic language—which we hardly notice in the Latin alphabet used today to transfer the English language and hundreds of other languages. Through a series of accidental developments, the Latin alphabet has become the most important writing system worldwide. Although it is a means of transferring language, it is likely to outlive most familiar languages on Earth. We can better estimate the way humanity currently uses writing and its greater significance for the emerging global society by understanding the source from which writing originated, which is the subject of this book. Writing interests everyone; for nearly six thousand years, each era has embraced this marvel—the most diverse and enjoyable tool for society—and today, ancient writing attracts special attention because it allows the past to speak to us in languages long extinct. Here, writing becomes like a perfect machine for traveling through time. Writing systems and scripts are in a constant state of change forever, but at a much slower pace than the languages they convey. However, writing is more than just "drawing sounds," as the French philosopher Voltaire said. It has become an ideal tool for transferring human knowledge ("sciences"), a cultural medium for society ("literature"), a means of democratic expression and mass media ("journalism"), and one of the forms of art itself ("calligraphy"), to mention some aspects of the creative manifestations of writing. Today, entire writing systems based on electronic communication have surpassed what was— and still is— the domain of speech-based writing. Computers can "write" entire messages and program commands, exchange them among themselves, and simultaneously develop new systems that surpass everything we have understood that the word "writing" describes. Even the materials used in writing are undergoing tremendous changes; electronic ink on plastic screens, as thin as paper, may replace the traditional material—paper—that itself replaced animal skins in the past. Writing changes with the features of humanity; it is like a measure of the state of humanity. The author, Stephen Roger Fischer, is a New Zealand linguist who served as the director of the Polynesian Languages and Literature Institute in Auckland, New Zealand, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2010. He has authored more than 150 books and articles on linguistics, and is often cited for his contributions to deciphering ancient texts. Among his works are "The History of Reading," whose Arabic translation was issued by the Kalimah project, and "The History of Language." Rasha Salah Al-Dakhakhni is an Egyptian translator who graduated from the Department of English Language and Literature at Cairo University in 2006. She obtained a diploma in legal translation and a United Nations translation diploma from the American University in Cairo in 2013. Throughout her professional career, she has collaborated with several Egyptian and Arab publishing houses. Recently, she received the "Young Translation" Award for 2023 from the National Center for Translation in the Arab Republic of Egypt for her translation of the book "Companions of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life."