题目内容

19、Getting It in Writing

Writing is a system of communication relating to sight that is made up of symbols recorded on a surface. The symbols used in writing stand for words, sounds, or ideas. Writing is a relatively new idea in human history. It is only about 5.500 years old. The earliest writing systems were developed by the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Phoenicians.

The earliest known writing system appeared sometime between 3500 and 3000 B.C. in Sumer, a region in what is now known as the Middle East. Sumerian writing used pictographs(     ), or pictures, that stood for words or ideas. The Sumerians wrote with a pointed stick on wet and flat earth that later dried and hardened.

   Around 3000 B.C. the Egyptians, who were very creative, invented a kind of writing known as

hieroglyphics(      ). Most hieroglyphs drew whole words, but some of them stood for sounds in words. The Egyptians cut their hieroglyphs into the surface of stone, painted them on pottery, and wrote them on papyrus, a type of paper made from a plant fiber(纤维).

The Phoenicians were traders traveling regularly on the sea, and lived along the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. They were the first to develop a different kind of writing system, around 1000 B.C. Instead of pictographs, Phoenician writing was made up entirely of letters. Their 22 letters stood for consonant（辅音）sounds in words, but vowel（元音）sounds were not stood for.Later the Greeks and Romans used the Phoenician system（    ）as the basis for their alphabets（字母表）, adding letters for vowel sounds.

1．How was the Phoenician alphabet different from the Greek and Roman alphabets?

       A．It had no letters for consonant sounds.

       B．It has no letters for vowel sounds.

       C．It was made up of pictographs.

       D．It had more letters.

2．Which of the following presents the right order of the writing system in the article?

3．What is the purpose of this article?

       A．To inform readers about how writing system developed

       B．To tell readers how the modern alphabet was invented.

       C．To persuade readers to study earliest writing systems.

       D．To describe symbols from ancient writing systems.