Another Short History of Linguistics (7)

For a brief summary, we may understand that from pictogram turned into alphabet is in fact changed the writing and pronouncing system from open into some arbitrary limited signals. It means to say the inventor believed that the information of the whole universal could be represented by twenty something alphabets. One step more we may find the further simplification would lead the invention of modern computer or the Morse code. Yet the binary system had been invented since ancient China as 八卦 eight diagrams:

But no one dared to use them for language, because with only two symbols, even in the ancient time, the necessary words were far more than this. Likewise, in China no one think about using twenty something alphabet for language, because such few symbols still could not meet the requirement. On the contrary until now, no one of alphabet language have ever ask such a question that for simplification the Morse code even simpler, why not use them for our language? Why just stopped at 20-30 alphabets? But, when the electronic computer appeared, at the beginning the software maker first invent ASCII, then Unicode. Each system has more symbols than other. That is to say the information of future is unknown, we have to invent more and more symbols to face the unknown universe. With this knowledge, again, when reviewing the alphabetic revolution we may find it maybe not as admirable as we thought before. It maybe a little bit rash to limited our writing and pronouncing system in a certain range. It similar the grammar, that restricted the expressing by few certain rule. As if the inventors already knew what would have happened today and future. The Bible in Greece was roughly using a vocabulary of five thousands. And what a vocabulary used in everyday life of the ancient Phoenician? Their information could be much less than Bible and with such a handful information, how could they lay down the constitution of our language? 

I think all the problem came from the unchanged quantity of alphabet for thousand years. It seemed like that today we still use computer of 486, and change the software forever. Do you think the hardware can match the software? The difference between cipher code and natural language is the former is only available in a small area and the more inconvenient the better. But the natural language is on the contrary, it prefer fully use the whole five sense to meet the requirement of the universe and the more convenient the better.