What
is the Greatest Irish invention ever? Every literate person in the
western world and beyond uses it every day! In fact you are using this
invention to read this piece now? What is it? It is the space between
words! That's right, ancient texts were written without spaces. However,
Ireland was never part of the Roman
empire and the Latin language was foreign. Accordingly when Latin texts
arrived with Christianity, words needed to be separated to allow for
their translation into Irish and empower the native speakers to learn
the Latin language. Scriptio continua (continuous text) as it is known
was written as an aide-memoire therefore the writers did not need word
separators as these writings contained information that was already
known to them.
The earliest Greek inscriptions used interpuncts (dots between words) which was common in the writing systems that preceded it. The practice waned however and scriptio continua became common place.
References
"It was the Irish that invented spaces between words" - Melvyn Bragg BBC Radio Documentary introducing Professor of the history of the book at Durham University Richard Gameson. - "In Our Time - The Written World - Episode 2". The quotation above starts at 4:46
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b018wy46/In_Our_Time_The_Written_World_Episode_2/
www.bbc.co.uk
The earliest Greek inscriptions used interpuncts (dots between words) which was common in the writing systems that preceded it. The practice waned however and scriptio continua became common place.
References
"It was the Irish that invented spaces between words" - Melvyn Bragg BBC Radio Documentary introducing Professor of the history of the book at Durham University Richard Gameson. - "In Our Time - The Written World - Episode 2". The quotation above starts at 4:46
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b018wy46/In_Our_Time_The_Written_World_Episode_2/
www.bbc.co.uk
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