Image by Mahesh Patel from Pixabay
Writing is the written record of a culture, and it paints a picture of a culture’s very essence. I’ve heard it said that our words are to us as juice is to a fruit. When pressure is applied, what comes out? Taking this thought further, it is writing that it preserves that “juice” for others to consume or enjoy. One way writing systems are important in terms of cultural adaptability is that they allow others to have a window in to other cultures. When we visit or move to a new location, chances are that we will read about the new place and it’s culture as we begin the process of adaptation.
Writing systems provide a workspace for cultural adaptability. Tools and techniques can be developed to aid in translation, and these can continue to be built upon as time goes on. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is one of the those tools – “a sort of decoder ring for alphabets” (Gnanadesikan, 2009, p. 11). I found it fascinating that the IPA includes every phoneme from all languages, and that using it with an alphabet can crack the phoneme code for that alphabet (Gnanadesikan, 2009).
Moving from the written word to the written code – this type of writing also provides a workspace for improving cultural adaptability. The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) works with one alphabet – Latin (Friesen, Ockel, McGinnis, & Hinck, p. 2). This was good, but with globalization in many sectors, a standardized universal code was needed for computer systems to communicate worldwide. Unicode met the need. It goes quite a bit further – being a sort of umbrella code that works with many alphabets. Not only does it cover a multitude of alphabets, there is room to grow, and it is efficiently utilizes ASCII. When systems, software, and websites use Unicode – internationalizing – we can think of it as an expansion of communication capability. At this point, communicating with a variety of alphabets is possible. Localization happens when that alphabet is selected, and communication ensues using that alphabet (Friesen et al.).
I’m reminded of when I worked as a computer lab manager at a large school district. The population of English Language Learners in this district was also large. Frequently new students would arrive at our school with no experience with English. In the computer lab, we had a fun phonics-based program called Help Me to Learn. With just a little help logging in and learning to use the mouse, it was a good place to begin the journey to listening, reading, writing, and speaking English.
Gnanadesikan, A.E. (2009). The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Friesen, N., Ockel, D., McGinnis, P., & Hinck, G. For the Web to truly be “world wide.”Image by <a
Catalyst 