Page 26 - Abacoa Community News - February '24

Page 26, Abacoa
Book Review

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