Page 8 - Palm City Spotlight - February '24

Page 8, Palm City Spotlight

Book Review

Letter Perfect: The Marvelous not have learned in for educated daily reading and writing, out of an inventory

History Of Our Alphabet From elementary school of about 60,000 symbols overall.”
Here is an example of how the letters of today’s alphabet
grammar classes.
A To Z At that point have taken their shapes. The following, from the chapter
David Sacks begins about the letter A, is the caption that appears in the book
By Nils A. Shapiro his extraordinarily below the diagram on this page marked “Diagram A.”
As one whose entire informative history of
personal and business life the 26 letters of our
has been intimately involved alphabet, each in its
with the written word – own chapter. You can
from a love of reading that jump to any place in
began in early childhood the book; there is no
to my career as a magazine need to read them in
publisher and book and sequence. For example,
newspaper editor, as well I decided to turn first “The evolution of the ox. (1) Letter aleph, the ‘ox,’ as it
as the more than 200 book to the chapters about appears in one of the Wadi el-Hol inscriptions from about
reviews to date – I cannot the initials of my own 1800 B.C … Unlikely as it seems, this pictorial image was
recall a title ever attracting my attention more than the name, NAS – my middle name is Allen. I suspect you may the earliest form of our letter A. Today the horns of the ox
subject of this month’s column when I came across it in a want to do the same with your name. remain with us, unnoticed, in the upright legs of our A.
local bookstore. I found the histories so intriguing that I continued until (2) Aleph’s shape looks simpler in another early Semitic
And what a fortuitous discovery it was! I finished the entire book in one more week of sittings. I inscription, carved at Serabit el-Khadem in Sinai, perhaps
What surprises me is that this book, now in paperback, pointed out to my wife, Linda, to her delight, that her initial around 1750 B.C. (3) Two horns are still evident in the
was originally published, unknown to me, as long ago as “L” has traditionally been considered the most soothing and Phoenician aleph of 1000 B.C., but the letter is by now an
2003 – the work of author David Sacks, an expert in written relaxing of all the characters in the alphabet. I read to her the abstract form, to be written in three quick strokes of an ink
language who studied Greek and Latin at Swarthmore explanatory text, which included the following phrase: “The brush on papyrus or a stylus on ceramic. (4) By the 800s
College and Oxford University, and who is the author of L’s calming effect is heard in ‘lull,’ ‘lullaby,’ ‘lollipop,’ ‘lotus B.C., Phoenician aleph has a new look, rather more like an
an earlier book, Encyclopedia of the Ancient Greek World. land’ and ‘la-la land.’” ox’s head, to be written in perhaps two strokes. (Can you
On publication it was received with international Perhaps I can best illustrate the depth and diversity guess where the shape would go next?)”
acclaim. The New York Times reviewer wrote, “As fun of knowledge you will derive from this book by sharing As serious and complex as this subject is, what makes
to read as it is enlightening … Sacks’s obsession is several examples from Sacks’s research excerpted here. Letter Perfect a true joy to read is author David Sacks’s
contagious, and I can imagine few readers whose lives (Some of the text, including entire paragraphs, have been consistently light and approachable writing style, as is
would not be enriched by what he calls his ‘voyage of deleted for lack of space and have been replaced by three evident in his introductory page to the chapter about the
discovery.’” dots.) letter “V,” which features a photograph of Winston Churchill
I agree with that reviewer’s enthusiastic comment, but “One-quarter of Earth’s population, 1.4 billion people, in a familiar pose and the following text:
in all fairness to the readers of my column must add a use nonalphabetic writing. Basically, this means China, “History’s famous V. British Prime Minister Winston
note of caution to my description of this book’s content including Taiwan, and Japan. The Japanese system comes Churchill gives the ‘V for Victory’ hand sign to a London
and purpose. from an adaptation of the Chinese that dates back to the crowd in June 1943, during World War II. Conceived by
To begin with, I can promise that every one of the 367 600s A.D. … In Chinese script, Churchill in summer 1941 to help boost British morale
pages of this book will offer a bounty of fascinating facts each symbol denotes a whole after Britain’s darkest war year, the V sign proved hugely
you had not previously known. (That doesn’t include the word of the Mandarin Chinese popular in armies and homelands of the Commonwealth and,
reference section – bibliography, index and list of more language. We call such symbols eventually, the United States, a symbol of defiance against
than 100 helpful illustrations, photographs and charts that ‘logograms’ (from two Greek Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Churchill had initiated
accompany the text.) roots meaning ‘word letter’) … the sign as a knuckles-outward gesture but had reversed it
The author begins with a preface and opening chapter, It does not operate by conveying to thumb-outward after learning that the other one already
“Little Letters, Big Idea,” which together total 51 pages sound; it conveys the idea had the vulgar meaning of ‘Up yours.’ Without a doubt, that
that introduce the concept and beginnings of a written behind the word. … Example: continued nuance helped the V sign’s popularity.”
alphabet in Egypt in 2000 B.C., then trace it throughout See the Chinese symbol for the My review can be summed up in a single letter: A+.
many evolutions to the Modern Roman alphabet of 1840 word “Middle” in the logogram on this page.
we basically use today. “An alphabet enjoys one huge advantage over any other
The one caution I referred to above is that this writing system: It needs fewer symbols. No other system
evolution, because of its complex nature, is treated in a can get away with so few. This makes an alphabet easier to
rather scholarly way that requires your fullest attention learn. Students need memorize only two dozen or so letters
– perhaps requiring you to sometimes go back over the to begin building toward literacy … Compare our 26 letters
same text more than once in order to absorb so much to the Chinese system, which involves at least 2,000 symbols
information. Indeed, throughout this book you will be
presented with at least 100 times as much knowledge as
you can remember after one reading. If it is possible to
have too much knowledge placed before you all at once,
at least you will have it to turn to later for reference from
time to time. Provided this subject is of interest to you, it
will be well worth it.
Along the way you will learn the very interesting
reasons why the five vowels – a, e, i, o, u – were added to
the original characters to make up the 26 in our present
alphabet, as well as what most of us have long forgotten
about the “consonants” and “sibilants” we may or may

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