The World's Writing Systems
Peter T. Daniels, William Bright
Ranging from cuneiform to shorthand, from archaic Greek to modern Chinese, from Old Persian to modern Cherokee, this is the only available work in English to cover all of the world's writing systems from ancient times to the present. Describing scores of scripts in use now or in the past around the world, this unusually comprehensive reference offers a detailed exploration of the history and typology of writing systems. More than eighty articles by scholars from over a dozen countries explain and document how a vast array of writing systems work--how alphabets, ideograms, pictographs, and hieroglyphics convey meaning in graphic form.
The work is organized in thirteen parts, each dealing with a particular group of writing systems defined historically, geographically, or conceptually. Arranged according to the chronological development of writing systems and their historical relationships within geographical areas, the scripts are divided into the following sections: the ancient Near East, East Asia, Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Additional parts address the ongoing process of decipherment of ancient writing systems; the adaptation of traditional scripts to new languages; new scripts invented in modern times; and graphic symbols for numerical, music, and movement notation. Each part begins with an introductory article providing the social and cultural context in which the group of writing systems was developed. Articles on individual scripts detail the historical origin of the writing system, its structure (with tables showing the forms of the written symbols), and its relationship to the phonology of the corresponding spoken language. Each writing system is illustrated by a passage of text, and accompanied by a romanized version, a phonetic transcription, and a modern English translation. A bibliography suggesting further reading concludes each entry. Matched by no other work in English, The World's Writing Systems is the only comprehensive resource covering every major writing system. Unparalleled in its scope and unique in its coverage of the way scripts relate to the languages they represent, this is a resource that anyone with an interest in language will want to own, and one that should be a part of every library's reference collection. |
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The world's writing systems
User Review - Not Available - Book VerdictNearly 80 international scholars, the editors among them, have contributed entries in The World's Writing Systems covering all scripts officially used throughout the world as well as their historical ... Read full review
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Absolutely indispensable.
This book is beautiful. An incredibly extensive compilation of information about the writing systems of the world, with illustrations and examples every major system and most minor systems ever used to represent the speech of almost any human language (and even other information, such as music notation). No comparable work exists.
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Common terms and phrases
adapted addition alphabet ancient appear Arabic Aramaic Asia basic beginning called Cambridge century changes characters Chinese Classical combinations common consonant continued corresponding cultural cuneiform Cyrillic derived developed diacritics dialects distinct distinguished early English example FIGURE final Gloss Greek hand Hebrew Indian indicated initial inscriptions Italy known language later Latin letters Linguistics London manuscripts marks meaning Middle names nasal notation occur original orthography palatal period Persian phonetic position possible printing pronounced pronunciation records represent Roman SAMPLE script Semitic separate shape short shows signs single sometimes sound South spelling standard stop Studies syllabary syllables symbols TABLE texts tion tone traditional Transcription Transliteration University University Press usually values voiced vowel words writing system written