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ronanmcd's review
informative
medium-paced
4.0
A nice compact history of his the letterforms that make up the Latin alphabet came about. Short, sweet and stunningly produced.
sovteck's review
4.0
A clear, concise and interesting history. I don't know much about linguistics so I can't speak for the authenticity of what Davies is saying but it's certainly well presented, nicely detailed and easy to follow for the beginner. It's short, filled with lovely visuals and infused throughout with the human interest inherent in good information about past societies, which is a quality that always makes history nerds get excited. Definitely not an intimidating read. I enjoyed it a lot.
orielwen's review
5.0
This is a slight but nevertheless informative book on the history of the development of the modern alphabet as used in English. As always with Folio Society books, it's beautifully presented, with a lovely gold-blocked cloth cover and a slipcase.
The first half of the book gives a general overview of the development of alphabetic languages and lettering in general, focusing in on Europe, while the second half examines the (speculative, in some cases) history of the shape of each letter in the modern English alphabet. There are many illustrations and examples.
The book concludes with a short mention of modern hieroglyphs (road signs and similar pictographs) and the idea that rebus-style text abbreviations might develop into a new modern shared alphabet. Even for a book published in 2006, I'm surprised that there is no mention of emoticons or emoji at this point, but then Lyn Davies's point here is not how a new writing system might evolve but how the borrowing of abbreviations or pictographs into another language now might mirror the way Egyptian hieroglyphs and Phoenician symbols might have been adopted and adapted to serve the needs of other languages.
The first half of the book gives a general overview of the development of alphabetic languages and lettering in general, focusing in on Europe, while the second half examines the (speculative, in some cases) history of the shape of each letter in the modern English alphabet. There are many illustrations and examples.
The book concludes with a short mention of modern hieroglyphs (road signs and similar pictographs) and the idea that rebus-style text abbreviations might develop into a new modern shared alphabet. Even for a book published in 2006, I'm surprised that there is no mention of emoticons or emoji at this point, but then Lyn Davies's point here is not how a new writing system might evolve but how the borrowing of abbreviations or pictographs into another language now might mirror the way Egyptian hieroglyphs and Phoenician symbols might have been adopted and adapted to serve the needs of other languages.
nwhyte's review
3.0
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1697767.html
A decent little book on the origins of the alphabet, the first half being about the global question of how the Latin script developed from hieroglyphics via cuneiform, Phoenician, Greek and etruscan, and the second half taking each letter individually. I've read several books on this topic so not much was new to me; the information is very much presented for the non-specialist, and readers may well wonder what the sounds were precisely that were represented by the Semitic letters aleph and ayin (
A decent little book on the origins of the alphabet, the first half being about the global question of how the Latin script developed from hieroglyphics via cuneiform, Phoenician, Greek and etruscan, and the second half taking each letter individually. I've read several books on this topic so not much was new to me; the information is very much presented for the non-specialist, and readers may well wonder what the sounds were precisely that were represented by the Semitic letters aleph and ayin (
jellygiraffe's review
4.0
A super interesting and well-written history!! I've learnt so much about the alphabet. For example, one of the reasons some languages are read left to right, right to left, or both ways, is because it mimics the lines created by oxen ploughing fields! Also it wasn't rich folk or religious scribes who spread language and developed it but slaves who needed to speak to each other despite their varied backgrounds. Plus the letter 't' has remained pretty unchanged from early Semitic and Sumerian pictograms and was used to indicate a brand on an animal or person.
Did I write my own name in Phoenician letters? You bet I did.
Davies has a lovely final paragraph which made my inner linguistic heart sing:
'We are, unfortunately, left with only fragments of this early story – an offering to a goddess, a name on a dagger, graffiti scratched on a limestone cliff in the desert. But some of the gaps in our understanding can perhaps be filled by the realisation that today we are driven by the same impulses that have driven people throughout history – the impulse to express ourselves and record that expression, to list what we own, to write our names in order to give them some permanence – and that it was these very impulses that lead, around 4000 years ago, to the birth of the alphabet.'
Did I write my own name in Phoenician letters? You bet I did.
Davies has a lovely final paragraph which made my inner linguistic heart sing:
'We are, unfortunately, left with only fragments of this early story – an offering to a goddess, a name on a dagger, graffiti scratched on a limestone cliff in the desert. But some of the gaps in our understanding can perhaps be filled by the realisation that today we are driven by the same impulses that have driven people throughout history – the impulse to express ourselves and record that expression, to list what we own, to write our names in order to give them some permanence – and that it was these very impulses that lead, around 4000 years ago, to the birth of the alphabet.'
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