Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #197139 in Books
• Published on: 1996-02-08
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 968 pages

From Library Journal
Nearly 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 origins, each with an extensive bibliography. Included are tables of alphabets and syllabaries as well as script samples, usually featuring transliteration, transcription, and gloss of the text. The essays are grouped by topics, but a detailed index guides the user to specific terms or languages desired. There is even a section with entries treating notation systems used for music and movement. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems is arranged in dictionary format without an index, but with a substantial bibliography. Coulmas's (Writing Systems of the World, Blackwell, 1989) coverage is not nearly as comprehensive as the Oxford publication. In the article on the Cree Syllabary all scripts are mentioned, but tables are not provided for Inuktitut (Inuit language) or Chipewyan. "Gothic" script is discussed with only incidental reference to the term Fraktur, for which an interesting history is provided in the Oxford work. This, however, does not mean that the Coulmas encyclopedia is not a useful reference tool. Both publications are recommended for most reference collections, but The World's Writing Systems is clearly the more technically detailed. The determining factors for purchase will be price and needs of library clientele. There is a third choice for public or school libraries with limited resources: Akira Nakanishi's Writing Systems of the World (Tuttle, 1980). This inexpensive (pap. $14.95) ready-reference tool concentrates on modern languages and their scripts, with examples from newspapers, a color map of world writing systems, an index, and a bibliography.?Edward K. Werner, St. Lucie Cty. Lib. Sys., Ft. Pierce, Fla.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Without question the most comprehensive work ever published on this subject."--Times Literary Supplement
"Recommended for most reference collections."--Library Journal
"Divided into thirteen parts from grammatology to printing, it provides succinct and accurate descriptions of all the languages of the biblical world in addition to all others....an unusually informative collection...it will be of great value to those working in Near Eastern and biblical fields and will remain an indispensable tool for scholars and students for many years to come."--Religious Studies Review
"A wonderful book....A valuable contribution to the study of writing and one which will be of great practical use."--Bryn Mawr Classical Review
"A remarkable reference....This volume is the only comprehensive resource covering every major writing system and the way scripts relate to the languages they represent. It is a resource that belongs in every library's reference section and in the personal library of anyonw with a deep-seated interest in language."--Cryptologia
"Ranging from cuneiform to shorthand, from archaic Greek to modern Chinese, from old Persian to Cherokee, this is the only available work in English to cover all of the world's writing systems from ancient times to the present."--Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society
"It is difficult to imagine that anything more comprehensive will ever supersede this work."--Andrews University Seminary Studies

Language Notes
Text: English

Customer Reviews

A great book
Anybody who's interested in how we write the world over would do well to pick up this book. It's awfully costly, it's true, but if you're patient and you poke around a little, you can find it used for a third or less of what it's listed for.
Serious linguists specializing in writing might read it through, but amateurs--like me--will just pick it up and leaf through it, stopping here and there, reading this chapter or that, or will use it to look up some specific thing they might want to know about, say, Bishop Wulfila's Gothic script's roots in the Greek alphabet or the origins of the Georgian or Armenian alphabets.
It tells about scripts found all over the world, big ones--Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and so on--and far less well known ones, like Berber, Cherokee, Ethiopian, Deseret and some found in Indonesia and islands in the Indian Ocean.
It tells the historic backgrounds and--for lack of a better word--genealogies of the scripts, then shows how they work.
One thing that irks me no end is a shortcoming not with the book itself, but rather with the publishing business as a whole: the font used in the book is inadequate. It is appalling that in a book about writing systems, there are characters that have to be set in other fonts from the main book forn--sometimes even within one word--and characters that show up as composite characters with diacritics off center from the letter they modify. It is a fairly simple thing to edit a font and add characters as needed. It is a shame that major publishing companies seem unwilling to make the small investment in typography that would let them set a book like this in one font, with all the characters needed, so that it reads smoothly, without distracting inconsistencies throughout.
Now, this is indeed a niggling compalint, and it in no way reflects on the beek itself, the writers or the editors. It is the fault of the publisher, and should in no way dissuade anyone interested in this admittedly esoteric subject from getting this book.

Rare Excellence
The "World's Writing Systems" is a rare event for in one tome it covers all the ways of writing known to us at present. As a professional graphologist this is an absolute boon not only for what it is but because it is also on special offer. While there are other tomes of similar ilk and implication this work has no equal. Until now the study of written language has had no clearly defined reference work.

It has now. Thoroughly recommended.

Peter West

Concise and interesting
It seems that this book is not intended for a general reader, judging both by its price and by multitude of unexplained linguistic terms plentifully sown in the book. I bought this book becuse of many positive reviews and because it was drastically reduced to USD45. The book scans many dozens of wrining systems, as good as it's possible to squeese into ten-some page article, but unfortunately, many of the systems, especialy the ancient and the modern Oriental are too complicated and extended to be fully accounted in a limited space, so you can get acquanited with some 30 Sumer pictograms and never know the other 550, or you can see the 200 Chinese chanacters and just recall there several thousands more or look into Devanagari alphabet but then keep in mind there is a multitude of amalgams that are not easily recognized and so on.
It is also very helpful if one knows like what exactly sounds a linguolabial or a laminal or a voiced epiglottal fricative, otherwise he may be at lost..