Written Language - Written Language Vs. Spoken Language

Written Language Vs. Spoken Language

Written languages change more slowly than corresponding spoken languages. When one or more registers of a language come to be strongly divergent from spoken language, the resulting situation is called diglossia. However, such diglossia is often considered as one language, between literary language and other registers, especially if the writing system reflects its pronunciation.

Native readers and writers of English are often unaware that the complexities of English spelling make written English a somewhat artificial construct. The traditional spelling of English, at least for inherited words, preserves a late Middle English phonology that is no one's speech dialect. The artificial preservation of this much earlier form of the language in writing might make much of what we write intelligible to Chaucer (1343–1400), even if we could not understand his speech.

Written Language refers to communication in its written form - most commonly in the forms of reading and writing. However we are in a need for oral language; speaking and listening skills are acquired naturally by young children remarkably without the need for having to teach them. Language in its written form has become a process that is required in our oral language rules and must be clearly taught. There are many languages in our world that exist, but do not have a written form.

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Famous quotes containing the words written, language and/or spoken:

    All good things are strong inducements to life, even that good book written to attack life.
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

    The language I have learnt these forty years,
    My native English, now I must forgo,
    And now my tongue’s use is to me no more
    Than an unstringèd viol or a harp.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.
    Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 4:10.

    Moses.