Ms. Wolf, are you trying to seduce me? An open letter

Dear Ms. Wolf,

Am I wrong? Or are you just playing with my emotions? After starting your book I was intrigued. I admit that I wanted to be drawn in by something that could tickle my brain as well as my heart. And in chapter one, you were so good at mixing science and literature in just the right way to keep me wanting more. But, as I eagerly delved into chapter two, you sidestepped my lovers embrace and piled on so many facts about the history of ancient readers and writers and how linguists define different types of language that I felt like I was being smothered by a dancing two ton hippopotamus.

How was I supposed to fully comprehend the various diagrams of a human brain? Even though you explained that the difference between the person that looks at a jumble of recognizable letters like 'mbli' and the and then at those same letters forming the word 'limb' equals triple the neural brain activity so well, I was confused.

And can you blame me that I was dumbfounded when you explained that the neurons at the back of my brain reach out with guided synapses to create links between other neurons across the different parts of my brain so that when I learned to read the word 'cow', not only did the back of my brain recognize that I was looking at something with my eyes but five or so other areas of my brain were simultaneously de-coding the letters C-O-W to mean a four legged animal with large udders from which I get a healthy beverage perfect for dunking my chocolate chip cookies in?...etc... etc..?

AND can I really be expected to know that had I not learned to read; those same synapses that reached between neurons and across vast swaths of brain tissue probably wouldn't have made their epic journeys to reach out and touched someone; therefore not creating the necessary brain wiring to allow me to read the word cow as that previously mentioned four-legged animal?

Then, just at I was slowly digesting new information about brain function, you gave me all these different words on page 34 that break down languages into different types. Like: pictographic (pictures) and logograhic (abstracted pictures meaning...pictures) and logosyllabary (which I'm not really sure about, except that they somehow mix syllables and abstracted pictures to create some sort of hybrid written form. Similar to types of modern Chinese and Japanese written language). You said logosyllabary language "makes far more demands on the brain" when compared to the other two; and I believe it because my brain hurts Ms. Wolf, it hurts.

Then you talked about morphological words and how they allow people to add an 's' at the end of words like 'bear' and how without the invention of morphological words we wouldn't be as able to even think the many complex thoughts we do now.

I was crying Ms. Wolf, crying on the inside when you hit me with the Sumerians and Egyptians and how they both had similar languages but before them was this culture that made clay tokens with little scratches on them to tell each other who had more cattle and who had more sheep.

But you didn't care did you? You didn't care when you told me about how amazing the Sumerian language supposedly was...is...er, was...and how it developed and changed over several hundreds of years and how it was essentially one nail, pressed into clay tablets to create different patterns and how the written language consisted of thousands of different symbols that were both logographic and logosyllabary. You didn't care that I was exhausted by then.

I admit, I perked up and laughed when you explained that Sumerians taught students to read both semantically and phonetically which was a "metacognitive strategy to teach reading". I didn't laugh because I thought it was funny. I laughed because you said, today experts are debating whether it is more effective to teach kids to read semantically or phonetically. Apparently the Sumerians figured that one out for us, thousands of years ago. My laugh wasn't really an audible ha ha kind of a laugh, it was more of an inward snicker...more like a heh heh.

But, I cried again when I found out(to be perfectly truthful, I didn't really cry...I don't want to be overly dramatic here) that it took about 7 years to learn to read and write as a kid in Sumeria and that reading and writing was reserved only for the elite. I cried, Ms. Wolf.

Then I laughed out loud (for real this time, because dang it, it was pretty funny) after you explained how learning to write in Sumerian was so hard to do and that there are so many existing clay tablets as evidence of that difficulty. Apparently, students didn't always write as well as their teachers wished because the phrase "And then he caned me" was at the end of many error filled clay tablets.

I was tapped out Ms. Wolf, just about gone. But you kept going. You said Egyptian writing is more beautiful and more complex than Sumerian...You said that we don't know which written language came first. You said that even though the Sumerian culture died, it's writing style lived on for around a thousand years because some fifteen other cultures adopted it as their own. Apparently the Arkadians were one of the adopters and they used it to write books with titles like the "Epic of Gilgamesh" between 668 and 627 BCE and "Advice of a Father to His Son" and "All Things Known about the Universe" and even "Treatise of Medical Diagnostics and Prognostics"

And I was exhausted Ms. Wolf. Exhausted

My brain was pulsing with information that I couldn't possibly understand so quickly.

Then, somehow a thick honey like humidity filled my heart and mind and I felt warm inside. I floated. Just floated.

How expertly you broke me down, Ms. Wolf, with scientific images, linguistic vocabulary and ancient history. How delicately you lifted me with knowledge of far off and ancient written cultures developing completely different languages from those I just read about. Oh, how the thought of the poetic nature of human ingenuity made me smile when I thought how of so many people spread across time and space had the capacity to invent their own symbolic forms of writing. And that, for generations people would endeavor to master them. I was tickled to hear that we understand some ancient languages yet some remain a mystery.

I fell in love with sadness as I read of how Chinese women that were foot bound, developed and propagated their own secret language called nu shu, female writing. And that it was "drawn on delicately painted fans or sewn into beautiful fabrics in ritual letters". You told me, Ms. Wolf, that the last woman to speak and read nu shu died recently. She was ninety six.

So you leave me at the end of chapter two Ms. Wolf. Wondering which lover I will get next. The confusing one who leads me on with facts and words too big for me to understand at first glance? Or the gentle one who will speak tenderly with stories of mystery and human triumph? Perhaps it will be both; perhaps that is best.

Next, what will Socrates say?


Sumerian tablet


















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