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Eric A. Havelock

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Speech is an acoustic reality, writing a visual one. Performance of the former has been perfected through a million years of natural selection in the evolutionary process. The latter is a trick which we began to learn only yesterday (in terms of evolutionary time). To "hear" language (and to "say" it) is programmed in our genes; to "see" it (and "read" it) is not.
--
"Chinese Characters and the Greek Alphabet" in Sino-Platonic Papers, 5 (December 1987)

 
Eric A. Havelock

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