Text-messaging may have taken impersonality to the next level in America, but it is literally changing language in China, according to one scholar.
Victor Mair, a professor in Penn's East Asian Languages and Civilizations program, along with his colleagues Brian Spooner and Aslam Syed, spoke yesterday afternoon to an audience of about 20 at the Penn Museum on the evolution of language, in both written and spoken forms.
All three were attendees at a conference hosted by Penn about the "integration of writing to the way societies work," Spooner said.
Mair said that text-messaging - along with computers, novels and dictionaries- - is taking the Chinese language from a character-based system to a Romanized version that would be recognizable to Westerners.
While Mair explained the evolution of classical and vernacular Chinese, Syed focused on the history of Persian and Spooner presented an overview on the historical linkage between written and spoken language.
Persian, Syed said, is an interesting case because the language that was developed over a millennium ago is still understandable today.
He credited this to the early standardization of the language by scholars and merchants and the link between Persian and Islam.
Spooner described how, historically, spoken and written word were not as closely linked as they are today. As nations became more literate, common language connected their cultures.
"Literacy [is] perhaps the most important organizational institution in our history," he said.
As societies have become more technologically advanced, language has evolved accordingly, Mair said.
Computers, Syed added, have caused a "crisis in the modern world."
Script, which was an art form in both ancient China and Persia, has all but disappeared. Movies, TV and the Internet have blurred languages by introducing foreign words and pushing out traditional ones.
Still, the scholars said they were optimistic about the future of the written word because of the efforts of scholars.
Jeff Rice, a graduate student in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, said he found the talk informative.
"The most interesting thing was how widespread Persian was," Rice said. "I didn't realize that."
