One of the first things that one discovers, surveying the many hundreds of languages used throughout the world, is that many of them (perhaps a third or more of the world’s 7000 living languages) have no written form. And if one were to travel back in time to an earlier age, the proportion of languages having a written form would be far less. What this means for us is that written language is both secondary to spoken language and derivative of it. So, one might accurately state that all languages are spoken languages, but only some languages (albeit many of them) are also written languages. Thus, while this book will explore the nature of writing systems (in chapter 9) and the significant role that these indeed do play in language conflicts, it is essential that we first examine the properties of spoken language.