Monday, February 3, 2020

Making a person

per - pertaining to
sonar - thing making sound.

What makes us a person? We can talk.

 Latin personare "to sound through" 
Greek origin and compares Persephone

Per, in Spanish seems to precede most of the other roots, like English: perceive, persevere,perpendicular...

OK, we talk, but who wrote?

Scribe:

 (from PIE root *skribh- "to cut"). Sense "one who writes, official or public writer" in English is from late 14c.

The vocal tribe were cutting the king's emblem into bronze and wood. 

Sayings, one or two lines of the king's stanza maybe have been cut or inscribed into bronze at the castle, to be presented by the poets. Absent portable writing, bandwidth is severely limited over the kingdom. But common oral language is essential. What is a king to do?

When parchment reached the IE people, it must have been a godsend, a miracle.  The idea of bringing literature to the parish level, in essence provide a library was suddenly in reach, with parchment and a little Latin helped. I would be surprised if folks formed reading clubs, met once a week at the hall ,  read outloud about fantasies, I would.  There was no other game in town, the christians grabbed onto literature and were effective with it from day one and carried that industry for a thousand years, until the arrival of paper.

The lesson here is a simple one, never stop funding and revealing new technology otherwise you get stuck for a thousand years with literature clubs. A thousand years waiting for paper, another four hundred  years waiting for moveable type. We cannot be that dumb, we should get some AI involved in research.

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