Naxi writing
Victor Mair,
Language Log,
Jan 25, 2022
S. Robert Ramsey writes, "The Naxi, a national minority indigenous to China's extreme southwest, have what looks for all the world like pictographic writing as its literary tradition." What I found interesting is that the model of 'reading' the language is quite unlike what we would usually say about reading. "the symbols aren't actually 'read.' They're mnemonic devices used by a priest of the Bon religion to remind him of the details of a story he already knows by heart." The writing is a memory aid, not an encoding. This suggests a process quite different from the 'decoding' process of reading described by some contemporary educators.
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