Product Description

This is a handy reference to the main scripts and alphabets of the world. Forty alphabets are presented and discussed, with entries ranging from the mainstream, such as Amharic, Chinese and Thai; to the more obscure, Buginese and Cree.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1997484 in Books
• Published on: 1997-11-06
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 132 pages

About the Author
George Campbell is the author of Routledge's Compendium of the World's Languages and Concise Compendium of the World's Languages.

Customer Reviews

Essential reference work
This slim volume contains 39 scripts (and their variants) along with their transliterations and brief histories. The scripts of most major languages are covered, as well as some key historical scripts such as Devanagari and Gothic. The scripts are arranged in alphabetical order to aid rapid lookup. The book would be an essential reference for a library as well as an interesting addition to the collection of anyone interested in languages or scripts.

Handy, but unreliable
The collection of the various alphabets and scripts listed in this book is rather arbitrary, and at times cited from out-dated (thus erroneous) sources. The handbook serves as a convenient quick-reference tool for those interested in recognizing (as opposed to studying/ learning) some of the world's script, nothing more.

The inclusion of extinct scripts such as the Egyptian hieroglyphs was perhaps intended to give an impression of erudition, but the author based his Middle Egyptian "alphabet" on Budge's 70-year-out-of-date list and contained misread and missing signs. If the author had checked his references, he should at least be quoting from Gardiner's (40 years+) or better still, from more recent Egyptian grammar books such as Allen's. No examples of latter forms of Egyptian writing - hieratic, demotic..etc were given.

For a "handbook" on writing and scrips, the book somehow chose to omit the earliest attested form of writing - Mesopotamian cuneiforms - from which most books on the history of script and writing usually approach the subject. A few signs of Sumerograms (Sumerian logograms) or the derived Akkadian syllabic signs would have sufficed as examples. Other extinct but famous scripts, such as the Mayan glyph or Rongorongo were also excluded.

While it is true that the many scripts derived from India are of interest to linguists, this booklet has such an overall bias on the various forms of Brahmic-derived Indic, Dravidian and Indo-chinese writing systems that one gets the impression this must be the author's area of specialty.

By contrast, its sections on East-Asian scripts and Semitic scripts are extremely terse. For instance, on giving an example of Japanese writing of the foreign loan-word "Table", the Katakana form was shown but the author did not even bothered to translate it (perhaps assuming the reader already reads Japanese). It would be useful to illustrate the various stages in the development of Chinese script as well. An important precursor to Syriac & Herbrew - Aramaic -is not even listed, nor are the many styles of Arabic scripts - Kufic..etc. Such shortcomings show his lack of expertise in these areas.

Extremely Expensive, Extremely Thin
This book is nice, but too expensive and too thin...
It doesn't go into great detail, it is very brief.
A quarter of its price would be still a bit expensive.
The pages makeup is a bit flat.