Speech does not equal writing

The assumption that writing exists solely to represent speech is also gravely mistaken. As Coulmas has observed, “Writing is for readers who have little need for minute phonetic information because they know the language that is written and, therefore do not depend on such information for identifying meaningful units in the text.” Moreover, as Coulmas notes that the origins and development of writing are independent of spoken language: “writing did not evolve as a means to record speech but as a system of communication” (2003: 15). The purpose of writing is to communicate meaning, not sound.—William Schniedewind, in Advances in Biblical Hebrew Linguistics, 113

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I need to be reminded of that every now and then…
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