Page 12 - PGA Community News - February '24

Page 12, PGA C.A.N.! February 2024 February 2024
Book Review

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

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