McLuhan: We’ll talk in due time about the effects of writing which are fantastic. But, I mean alphabetic writing. I gather that Julian Jaynes does not know alphabetic writing and other kinds of writing. Phonetic writing is the only kind of writing that has this special effect on the human psyche. Ordinary writing, say, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and other alphabets, do not have the effect of the phonetic alphabet.
Forsdale: Let me make sure that we’re clear on this point. The phonetic alphabet is the kind of alphabet in which the sounds of the language are analyzed and a finite number of marks are put down representing the sounds of the language. We use a phonetic alphabet. In English it doesn’t work very well because we would need about 48 letters to be equivalent to the necessary sounds to do a good spelling job. There are other methods of writing,
