Blair Collection > Kelt or Gael

CHAPTER IV.
Modes of communicating Ideas. Gestures. Words. Pic-
tures. Hieroglyphs. Alphabets. The Phcenician..
The Chinese or Japanese. The Aztec. Their
Histories. All European Alphabets derived from
THE Phcenician. Oghamic Writing.
Modes of
communicat-
ing ideas.
Alphabets.
Picture.
Symbol.
Sound.
Man may communicate his ideas by gestures,
words, pictures, atid writing. Of these modes ges-
ture is the most general, and the sole mode with
primitive man. Gestures and words pass, writ-
ing remains. It involves the invention of an
alphabet.
An alphabet is a body of symbols representing
the sounds of a language.
The first stage in ideography seems to be a
rude drawing representing the thing expressed,
as the figure of an animal. The cave men were
equal to this feat. That drawing being improved
and colour added, we get the picture language.
The next stas^e is that of the invention of a
symbol for each figure, and that is the hiero-
glyphic stage. The next is the invention of a
symbol for a sound, and we get the phonetic
stage.
The latest expression of the history of alphabets.