Customer Reviews

Writing Systems of the World: Alphabets, Syllabaries, Pictograms

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The map inside the front cover is worth the price on its own. I have not seen a similar map anywhere else and believe me, Ive looked. The description of the worlds writing systems is useful and the metric for inclusion (they have to be used on newspapers stamps or currency) is a clever way of identifying significant writing systems in common use. Some information on encoding of writing systems for computer use would have increased the value of the book for me but would probably turn off a great number on non-technical potential readers.

An update of this book is overdue. Much of the information is from the 1970s and a lot has changed since then. Many of the former soviet republics have changed, or are changing their writing systems from Cyrillic to either Arabic or Latin.

This book serves well as a compact catalog of the major writing systems in the world. It's not the reference I was looking for, however. It's quite brief, and the examples are almost always newspapers. The other issues I have are:

1. It's kind of out of date - the information is all from the eighties. There's been some redrawing of the borders and changes in fonts and conventions since then.
2. The quality of the reproductions is poor. Many of the beautiful scripts in here are not shown in their best light. The plain fonts and photocopy-quality examples just don't do the scripts justice.

Still, it does contain reproductions of a lot of alphabets. It would be really handy in identifying an unkown sample of writing, for example.

Have you ever come across a label from an imported food item, or perhaps a local newspaper put out by an immigrant community, and found yourself mystified by a writing system which was utterly alien to you? Whether or not you've had such an experience, Akira Nakanishi's "Writing Systems of the World" will open your eyes to the glorious diversity of its title subject.

Nakanishi's excellent reference work organizes the writing systems geographically. Each of the major writing systems is carefully profiled, and the phonetic equivalents (in Roman characters) are given for all syllabic and alphabetic characters.

The book dramatically illustrates the major writing systems by reproducing pages from newspapers throughout the world. It is marvelous to see the Armenian alphabet, the Amharic syllabary, and many other writings systems thus used in the context of practical daily communication.

In addition to the thorough profiles of nearly 30 major systems, Nakanishi gives shorter examples of dozens more writing systems, ranging from those used with extinct ancient languages to new writing systems invented in modern times. The book also contains appendices which explain the classification system for writing systems (ideographic versus phonetic, phonemic versus syllabic, etc.) and the variations in directions in which scripts are written. A glossary, a bibliography, and an index all add to the book's usefulness.

Not only is this book informative, but it is also a visual feast which offers delights and surprises on every page. This is a reference work to be savored.

I liked this book, though finding it incomplete. It provides samples of the scripts used for most of the important languages of the world, but not all. There are some errors (a newspaper illustrated to show the Hebrew alphabet used for writing Yiddish is described as being published in the wrong place, as I, who can read Yiddish, could easily determine) but it is more accurate than a lot of other books on the subject.

The book is slim, and talks of writing systems more than languages. Thus "Russian script" really means Cyrillic and includes all the languages that use Cyrillic script. It is not a book to learn a language from, but rather a reference on alphabets, and for that purpose, I think a good but not great one.

The author does appear to be somewhat obsessed with newspapers. If a script is used for writing newspapers, it is important to the author; otherwise not. And for every script, the author gives an approximate count of the newspapers published using that writing system. But this is hardly a serious flaw.

This is not a perfect book on the subject, but it is one I liked. So I certainly recommend it.

This delightful, short (116 pages, including glossary) reference book is a good read and a useful, quick tool to look up what is on that stamp, coin or maker's mark you want to decipher. It is frustratingly out of date. The Japanese original, of which this is the 1980 translation, predates major events like the fall of the Soviet Empire and the birth, rebirth or change in government of many countries and their subdivisions with consequent changes for official languages and scripts. Much scholarly work would require changes in the material. For example, linguistic analysis in the 1980's calls into question whether Thai should be classified as Sino-Tibetan. The recent Yale discoveries of early Semitic graffiti and much archaeological work in Central Asia, the Near East and elsewhere needs incorporation in a revised volume. Some detail known at the time of publication was omitted that would be of interest, like the alphabetic core of the Egyptian hieroglyphic system. The lack of mention of "Cretan" [it was found in profusion at Mycenae on the Greek mainland, also] Linear B being a syllabary used to write early Greek is another puzzling omission. So is the relationship of Etruscan writing to the Germanic runic alphabets not to mention the Roman alphabet. The statement on page 106 that there was no contact between the Americas and the "Old World" before the 15th century was known to be inaccurate at the time of publication and much more evidence of contact has been discovered since. In short, this is an enjoyable book with a delightful presentation. As should be clear, I want to see a new edition with a few corrections, some short elaborations and modernization of the material.

This is one of my favorite books. There are others that perform the same task, (notably Kenneth Katzner's "Languages of the World," which includes far more languages and examples of scripts.) However, for some reason this book has it's own magic.

It contains excerpts from newspapers in 29 different scripts, from all over the world. They are classified by geographical region. The phonetic value of the symbols are helpfully assessed for the reader, in alphabetic charts which accompany each selection. Each script shown is prefaced by a short paragraph explaining the history and development of that script.

Don't miss the especially cool litle section at the end of each geographical collection. There is a section of "Other Scripts in West Asia," "Other Scripts in Africa," "Other Scripts in the Americas and Oceania," etc. These selections are not in newspaper format, but are given as short excerpts from whatever the original source may have been. Examples include the Easter Island script, Sumerian cuneiform, and the script of the Indus Valley civilization.

Basically this book is a lot of fun, and it really opens the mind to a sense of wonder. I highly recommend it for anyone.

Good. This book contains samples of all modern written scripts from around the world. Typically it will include a typeset of each 'alphabet', and probably a graphical example, such as a newspaper front page that uses that script. Some ancient scripts also get appearances.
Be warner, no theories of language are included. This is simply a collection.

The book is fairly short and does not go into extensive detail on each script; but it is complete, in that it covers all major scripts and alphabets with full transliterations of all letters. Overall, well worth its price.

I bought this book sight unseen as a present for my niece, but gave it away to a local charity instead. Much of the material is out of date (it predates the fall of the Soviet Union, and the explosion of archaeological discovery that has happened since then in Central Asia), and the book itself is poorly produced --- the printing is fuzzy, and many of the images look like third-generation photocopies.

If you are looking for an inexpensive guide that shows all of the modern writing systems, this is it. Even though it has not been updated in over 25 years, it still has almost everything you would want from such a book. The examples of newpaper front pages for many of the major languages is a great way to see the various writing systems in modern use. This book belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in internationalization or written languages in general.