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Rh the same sound but different meanings. Thus in English the pronoun I is sounded like the word eye, and the word reign, to rule, like the word rain. Now the picture writer, wishing to express the idea I reign, could do so by the use of the two pictures or ideograms given above, in this way,. When so used, the ideogram becomes a phonogram, and the writing is phonetic or sound writing.

In this manner the great chasm between picture writing and sound writing is bridged, and one of the most difficult steps taken in the development of a practical system of representing thought.

In the first stage of sound writing, each picture or symbol stands for a whole word. In such a system as this there must of course be as many characters or signs as there are words in the language represented. In working out their system of writing the Chinese stuck fast at this point (sec. 112).

Two additional steps beyond this stage are required in order to perfect the system. The first of these is taken when the characters are used to represent syllables instead of words. This reduces at once the number of signs needed from many thousands to a few hundreds, since the words of any given language are formed by the combination of a comparatively small number of syllables. With between four and five hundred symbols the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians, who used this form of writing, were able to represent all the words of their respective languages (sec. 53). Characters or symbols used to represent syllables are called syllabic phonograms, and a collection of such signs is called a syllabary.

While a collection of syllabic signs is a great improvement over a collection of word signs, still it is a clumsy instrument for expressing ideas, and the system requires still further simplification. This is done and the final step in developing a convenient system of writing is taken when the symbols are used to represent not syllables but elementary sounds of the human voice. Then the symbols become true letters, a complete collection of which is called an alphabet, and the mode of writing alphabetic.

When and where the final step was taken we do not know.