Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

Page 449

448
THE ALPHABET
resemblance to the thing to which their name or sound corresponds." For instance, the sign pu "has manifestly originated in a representation of a "fish" or pu in the native language; similarly also shrü, a "fishbone," lö, a "bottle," ngä, "bamboo," sart, "canoe," etc. If this suggestion be right, the script would be rather a kind of rebus-writing than a pure syllabary.
Origin
The above-mentioned suggestion of Professor Macmillan Brown is not in full agreement with another suggestion of his, which is probably right. "The script is now known only to five men on the islet; but it is probably a relic of a wide usage in the archipelago. There is no possibility of any one of the five having invented it. ..." On the other hand, I should not assert categorically that "if invented by them since Europeans arrived it would have taken the forms either of the European alphabet or of the things bought or sold ..."; the Cherokee syllabary, the Bamun writing, and other scripts prove that Professor Brown's statement is not exact. Indeed, there are a few Woleai signs which do resemble Latin letters, although they generally do not agree phonetically: mä resembles the M, ngä the N, shā is a kind of cursive S, na and voa look like an X, goo has the shape of a T, ma resembles a cursive C, so does gā, moa looks like an F, etc.
However, Brown's opinion-accepted also by Mason—is probably right. "This Oleai script is manifestly the product of long ages for the use of the organisers of a highly-organised community of considerable size. In other words, it must have belonged to the ruling class of an empire of some extent, that needed constant record of the facts of intercourse and organisation."
In this case, the origin of the Woleai script is perhaps in some way connected with the Further Indian branch of scripts, although this connection does not appear evident either from the graphic or from the phonetic points of view. There is, however, the possibility of the mixed process of invention and borrowing, called "idea diffusion"-to which reference has been made many times in the present book-the stimulus to invention afforded by the knowledge that a problem has been solved.
Whatever the solution of the problem may be, it is not easy to find a suitable place for this script in the history of writing.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
J. Macmillan Brown, 4 Nee Pacific Ocean Script, "MAN" (London), June, 1914