I was about to second Cal’s mention of Young…
So I’ll third it. Very awesome guy. I would have loved to sit down and chat with him, just shoot the shit. He’s such an interesting guy…
=
What’s [del]up[/del] with the way people used to write? Why [del]was the language[/del] so overburdened with pointless baggage? [del]In a modern language version[/del] I could [del]probably[/del] bring all the same information across [del]to the reader[/del] in a short paragraph or two. [del]Is it[/del] because it was [del]government[/del] legalese? [del]In other words,[/del] is the text better compared to [del]say[/del] a modern [del]huge, wordy legal[/del] deposition as opposed to the local bulletin board notice?
=
What’s with the way people used to write? Why so overburdened with pointless baggage? I could bring all the same information across in a short paragraph or two. Because it was legalese? Is the text better compared to a modern deposition as opposed to the local bulletin board notice?
. . . and that’s a fairly minimal edit, without changing any words. I could pare it down a lot farther and get the same message across, but it wouldn’t look like English anymore; the point being that English uses a lot of pointless words too :).
Champollion actually got seriously interested in the problem some years before Young did. He seems to have begun in ernest by 1808 at the latest, whereas Young didn’t have his interest pricked until the spring of 1814. By that stage, Champollion was publishing L’Égypte sous les pharaons, including a discussion of the stone and hypothetical partial translations. Fairly early on, Silvestre de Sacy points Young to that as the significant recent work on the subject, so it’s not even as if Champollion was languishing in obscurity.
However, in hindsight, Champollion hadn’t made much progress and, having then eagerly ordered the book, Young was very disappointed with it. What Young is developing is already a whole leap beyond.
Champollion’s early prior work thus has little influence on Young, while his more famous later work builds on Young’s contribution. But Champollion did start first.
Which just emphasises how quickly Young could progress when he got interested in something.
Another thing that may be going on is the use of epithets. In pre-literate or semi-literature cultures important nouns often acquire regular phrases that become associated with them as easily remembered bits of ornamentation. In modern writing authors rarely repeat themselves. Every little bit of prose is new and fresh. But in a culture that’ s primarily oral there’s a big advantage in repetition … it means that you have less to memorize. So in the Iliad we hear Homer speak over and over again about “Agamemnon, breaker of horses” or “crafty Odysseus”.
Except you would think when you’re carving something into stone, you’d stop to carefully think a bit about your word choice to minimize the amount of labour required.
Maybe. But maybe not if you’re the richest country around and you don’t know any other way to write something and make it last. I don’t think time and money would have been an issue.
2,000 years from now people might say, why did the Americans build computers? Didn’t they know how much easier it would be to bioengineer glorshnaks? 
There are always more slaves. Labour was not really highly-rated in the past.
Well, I haven’t been there, but a book I read set in India about the time of independence mentioned people using two different scripts for the same language and the new laws making only one of those scripts acceptable in government documents, thus rendering people who used the other script “illiterate” for purposes of getting government jobs.
Sorry, I can’t remember the name of the book or its author, but as the proscribed script was arabic lettering… it seemed to make sense.
Can any of our Indian Dopers verify this story? I’m afraid to use my google-fu, I’d believe one of you much more easily than “something I saw on the net.”
I read somewhere that English is still one of the official languages of India because it puts everyone at a disadvantage and cuts down on disputes about the members of Ethnic Group A trying to impose “their” language on Ethnic Groups B-Z, but I don’t know how accurate that is.
I do know that it’s a policy that’s inadvertently worked out very well for them, what with India now being the world’s largest English-speaking country and giving them a huge leg-up in the technological, industrial, and business world…
Except that there is no evidence that slaves were used to do inscriptions. Slaves weren’t even commonly used to build huge monuments, like the pyramids. In fact, there weren’t very many slaves of any kind in Egypt. Contrary to popular belief, the pyramids were built mostly by a skilled workers assisted by a temporary seasonal work force, probably a form of labor tax. These people ate well during the time they worked and had access to medical care. It is very doubtful that they were slaves.
Writing in Egypt, as in other ancient cultures, was considered the province of priests and royalty. In fact, one of the highest positions in the priesthood hierarchy was that of Scribe. While workers or even slaves may have prepared the stones for inscription, it’s very unlikely that slaves would have been trusted with performing the actual carving. Stratified societies of any stripe would be disgusted by the idea of people in a lower class performing sacred duties. Would the medieval church have given peasants the job of copying and illuminating a bible? You’d probably give a bishop an apoplectic fit from suggesting that.
Aside from the religious and social taboo, from a practical point of view it would be a very bad thing for there to be a mistake in a religious and political (the two were inseparable in Egyptian society) proclamation, particularly one that was, you know, carved in stone, and therefore a permanent record. That would reflect very badly on the ruler. Stone inscriptions were undoubtedly done by skilled workers, probably by one of the specialized castes of priests.
So how does this explain Robert Jordan?
Nothing explains Robert Jordan.
Yllaria snippet
(eta - it was the right thread, I just got distracted. Sorry to confuse.)
[/QUOTE]
**
Yllaria**,
You can simply delete the text of your unsubmitted post and get out any way you can. It’'ll be as if you were never there.
I’ve done it several times.
You realise, of course, that you’ve answered your own question. If you were so inclined, you could have condensed that paragraph into a single question.