i'll take the alphabet language

Something we probably all take for granted is our ability to communicate and interact with other persons, animals, and our environment through language (the ability to talk or sign/signal) and write. I know, for one, I am somewhat guilty of this. Wherein I find language – the ability to speak, to be fascinating it still seems more or less ‘natural’ for us humans to have this ability. The Walter J. Ong article did great job bringing to my attention, or my inattention, that writing and organized language, i.e. the alphabet language, is a mechanical and unnatural human creation. I never really thought about it before but writing is a tool we humans have developed to help communicate/interact/instruct what have you with others, and enhance our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

I really liked his exploring of the word ‘nevertheless’ with a literate person’s point of view and a non-literate person’s point of view, someone from a ‘completely oral background.’ Once again I was stopping to think about something I probably never tried to analyse, namely that: “A word is an event, a happening, not a thing, as letters make it appear to be.”

I am curious to explore, either on my own, because language interests me, or in some class what Ong talks about when addresses grapholects. The notion that through writing a culture, or language can increase its vocabulary significantly leaving another strictly oral dialect with few options for growth; remaining stagnant is interesting and also a little hard to understand why that is.