Leo Tolstoy

Writing about the syllabaria reminded me of a quote from Tolstoy, which dates from the 1870's when he put down the writing of one of his novels to teach reading to children. It seems that Tolstoy recognized that children were people too.

"One pupil has a good memory, and it is easier for him to memorize the syllables themselves than to comprehend the vowellessness of the consonants; another reflects calmly and will comprehend a most rational sound method; another has a fine instinct and grasps the law of word combinations by reading whole words at a time ." This quote appeared in Tolstoy on Education, 1967.

Some day I will find a copy of Taylor, volume 1, and read his tripartite typology of writing sytems. However, these three components, sounds (phonemes), syllables and words were already the recognized components of writing.