The symbols we use to write words evolve to become visually simpler over time, and an analysis of a writing system from West Africa shows that they can do so over just a few generations.
The script used to write the was invented in Liberia in 1833 and is still in use today. Those who devised it may have had some awareness of the Latin and Arabic alphabets, but the Vai script isn鈥檛 modelled on either. Its characters denote whole syllables, while alphabetic letters represent the individual sounds (or phonemes) that come together to form syllables.
What makes the Vai script particularly interesting, says at the University of New England, Australia, is that it has a nearly complete historical record. It was first documented by external scholars in 1834 and has been studied at least 16 times since then, most recently in 2005. This means we can examine the way its characters have evolved over their first 170 years of use.
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Kelly and his colleagues have now done this. There are about 200 characters in the Vai script, but the researchers focused on 61 that were most reliably documented down the years. The degree of visual complexity of each character was quantified via a computer program, which tracked any changes in this complexity as the years passed.
They discovered that individual characters have become less visually complex with time. This trend was most obvious among the characters that were most complex in the 1830s; these ones simplified to the greatest degree.
A similar process is known to have occurred in other writing systems, such as the first alphabet. This was derived largely from Egyptian hieroglyphics, but over time its letters stopped looking like pictures of objects and became simpler in visual appearance: for instance, an ox鈥檚 head became 鈥淎鈥�.
The researchers think they know why this happens. Inventing a writing system before you can actually write is a major cognitive challenge, says Kelly. Designing potentially hundreds of individual characters is tricky enough, but then you must remember the syllable or phoneme each sign represents. What鈥檚 more, you can鈥檛 keep track of this information by writing it down because the new writing system begins working only after you have memorised it. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a bit like trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,鈥� says Kelly.
He thinks that the memory task becomes easier if, paradoxically, you make your characters visually complex so that it is hard to confuse one with another.
Eventually, enough members of a society are familiar with the script that there is no longer any risk that characters and the sounds they represent will be forgotten. Kelly says that at this point, it generally becomes more desirable for characters to become less visually complex, because this makes reading and writing quicker and easier. 鈥淭he letters all end up becoming somewhat similar to one another with equal levels of visual complexity.鈥�
The Vai script analysis shows that this process can leave a detectable signature, even over a handful of generations.
at the George Washington University in Washington DC says the process isn鈥檛 always this fast, however. 鈥淭he more an ancient writing system was used, the more rapidly it developed,鈥� he says. The early alphabet, for instance, had few active users in its first 700 years and so alphabetical letters evolved slowly during this time.
The process doesn鈥檛 have to be entirely one way. More visually complex signs can be added to writing systems 鈥� emojis, for instance, though in this case Kelly says that research suggests emojis became popular not because they make writing more efficient by communicating precise meaning, but . 鈥淸When writing], you can鈥檛 modulate your tone of voice or convey sarcasm,鈥� he says. 鈥淓mojis compensate for this gap.鈥�
at the University of Nigeria welcomes the interest in the Vai script. But he cautions against over-simplification in the search for universal rules about the evolution of writing, particularly when studying a writing tradition unfamiliar to those who use the Latin alphabet. 鈥淎nyone engaged in such a study must prepare to traverse myriad realms of meaning, some bordering on the esoteric,鈥� he says.
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