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A comment on Studying the demise of historic civilisations. Parent comment

Re:Studying the demise of historic civilisations by dak1 on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @08:01AM (#19310204)
That's no different than saying the English alphabet is just a modified version of the Anglo-Saxon futhorc runic alphabet, and that with a dictionary and a bit of training you could use that too.

'ȝ' becomes 'g', 'Ð' becomes 'D', and we still use 'æ' today, which is also a rune, and they even used 'W'!

Also, the number of characters in Chinese has also drastically changed over time. So while many characters have a 1:1 lineage, far more characters simply did not exist 1 or 2 thousand years ago.

The only commonality is that they are based on pictographs and have a traceable etymology, although that's true for all languages.

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Re:Studying the demise of historic civilisations by hungryhobo on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @06:40PM (#19315261)
the difference is a single runic symbol does not convey any meaning while the Chinese characters does. which is why it's not hard for the average Chinese speaker to figure out what an ancient Chinese inscription is talking about
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