Page 20 - Boca Club News - February '24

Page 20, Boca Club News

The Arts

Book Review…“Letter Perfect:

The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet from A to Z”

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