Well these reasons explain why we need writing, true. They underly the whole discussion.
> Artificial memory is the practice of writing to oneself.
Not only to oneself. For instance, we may write to our descendents, since we will not be able to tell them personaly what we think. All writing is artificial memory, a colective artificial memory of the community that shares a certain writen language.
> This sort of writing [personal artificial memory] is usually done in
dialect
> and, more likely, in idiolect. Accounts, notes, and such.
> Have a look at your own campaign notes, everyone. Are they written
> according to the rules of good grammar? I doubt it! Are these notes
> likely to survive for our grandchildren's use?
There is a catch here. 20th century western men can use this sort of usage of writing much easier then in other times and places. We do have cheap and good quality paper and pens to write. And we use writing more extensively then in other times. If paper is expensive and writing is hard because the medium are of low quality, people will restrict the usage of writing for personal artificial memory. They will think more and perfect their ideas before putting them on paper. The result is that they will not resort for idiolects with the extension we do today.
BTW, what do westerners use to write? Paper and pens? Which color of ink do they favor?
> Private correspondance is also usually written in dialect.
There is a catch here also. The usage of private correspondence is restricted by the reliability of the media used to send it to destination. Whitout post services or something like it people will use much less private correspondence then we do. I suppose and you usualy write private correspondence to people that you cannot reach personaly. Since in Glora ntha most of the relations of a certain person live in the same community, and that communities are not large (by contemporary RW standards), there is not an extendsive need to communicate through writing.
And there is more: in Western Genertela the people most likely to use writing for private reasons are sorcerors. But they may have other communication means that substitute for snail-mail, based on spells: 'magical video-conferencing', 'multi-media magical mail' (mmm.something instead of www.something). Humm. Were the God Learners the IBM or the Microsoft of Glorantha?
> I generally disagree with Sergio's views of linguistic evolution in the
West,
> though. Unlike RW, the West came into being through a process of
> DEvolution, not Evolution. The first Western script was instead likely
> to be perfectly sophisticated, and only partially comprehensible to
anyone
> in 17th century Glorantha other than Zzabur and the wisest and most
> knowledgeable of the Brithini (wherever they may be).
I didn't give a timeline for my tentative evolution of western writing. I agree it doesn't correspond to what happened in the centuries before the 17th century (Glorantha time). I accept that writing in the 17th century corresponded to a devolution from a 'perfectly sophisticated' language. But, where did this 'perfectly sophisticated' language come from? Could it be that it resulted from an evolutionary process along the lines I described?
Sergio
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