Writing is prestigious, and our spoken pronunciations are sometimes felt to be imperfect realizations of what is written. […] In contrast, most linguists feel that spoken language is primary, and that written language is a derived system, which is mostly parasitic off the spoken language and is often rather artificial in character. Some reasons that support this view are that spoken language is far older than writing, it is acquired first and with greater ease by children, and it is the common property of our species, rather than of just an educated subset of it.
—
Bruce Hayes, Introductory Phonology
Note that signed languages, like spoken languages, are also considered primary for the same reasons.
The speakers of dozens of languages fit, sometimes awkwardly, the 漢字 to their local uses. Let’s not even talk about Latin script. Spoken is definitely primary.
(via allthingslinguistic)
