Eric A. Havelock: Alphabet

Eric A. Havelock was 1903-1988, British classical philologist. Explore interesting quotes on alphabet.
Eric A. Havelock: 10   quotes 0   likes

“Over the years, I have become convinced that Hellenism as a culture represents not a static condition of uniform sublimity mysteriously achieved and maintained as an effect of some racial advantage. Rather it should be understood as an evolving process, governed by a dynamic of change, as both language and thought underwent transformational alteration caused by a transition from orality to literacy. The instrument of change is discerned to be the invention of the Greek alphabet, at a quite late stage in the history of developing cultures.”

Eric A. Havelock

"Chinese Characters and the Greek Alphabet" in Sino-Platonic Papers, 5 (December 1987)

History , Change

“Could it be argued that if the Chinese revolution seems to be a response to the needs of rural society, whereas the Russian is an urbanized phenomenon, this difference corresponds to that which exists between the users of two different forms of written communication, the one archaic, the other alphabetic?”

Eric A. Havelock

"Chinese Characters and the Greek Alphabet" in Sino-Platonic Papers, 5 (December 1987)

Communication

“What our story, however, has demonstrated is the astonishingly checkered, not to say hazardous, career of a reading device which we in the West now take so much for granted. Historians have acclaimed the "triumph of the alphabet," but the triumph was often compromised, sometimes bitterly contested, and to this day is only half won.”

Eric A. Havelock

"Chinese Characters and the Greek Alphabet" in Sino-Platonic Papers, 5 (December 1987)

Reading

“A scholar like myself who is not a Sinologist and yet ventures the proposition that Chinese languages should be rewritten in the Greek alphabet (or "Romanized", to use the current term) is treading on uncharted territory (for him) and does so at his peril.”

Eric A. Havelock

"Chinese Characters and the Greek Alphabet" in Sino-Platonic Papers, 5 (December 1987) http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp005_chinese_greek.html