Language Visible: Unraveling the Mystery of the Alphabet from A to Z - Hardcover

Sacks, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0767911725 ISBN 13: 9780767911726

Publisher: Broadway Books, 2003

Synopsis

Letters are tangible language. Joining together in endless combinations to actually show speech, letters convey our messages and tell our stories. While we encounter these tiny shapes hundreds of times a day, we take for granted the long, fascinating history behind one of the most fundamental of human inventions -- the alphabet.

The heart of the book is the 26 fact-filled “biographies” of letters A through Z, each one identifying the letter’s particular significance for modern readers, tracing its development from ancient forms, and discussing its noteworthy role in literature and other media. We learn, for example, why the letter X has a sinister and sexual aura, how B came to signify second best, why the word “mother” in many languages starts with M, and what is the story of O.

Packed with information and lavishly illustrated, Language Visible is not only accessible and entertaining, but essential to the appreciation of our own language.

About this title

About the Author

David Sacks is author of the Encyclopedia of the Ancient Greek World. His articles mainly on cultural topics have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Wall Street Journal and dozens of magazines. He wrote a 26-part series for the Ottawa Citizen on the letters of the alphabet that was received enthusiastically by readers and which he has expanded and developed into Language Visible. Raised in New Jersey, he now lives in Ottawa, Ontario.

From the Back Cover

Advance Praise for Language Visible:
“At a time when it has become more important than ever to read clearly and intelligently in order to dismantle the daily traps of propaganda, this delightful book lays bare for us, with wit and wisdom, the very building-blocks of our culture: the mysterious letters of the alphabet that rule our language and thought.” -- Alberto Manguel, author of A History of Reading

“Reading David Sacks’s wonderful Language Visible is like sitting rapt before the coolest teacher in school. Sacks’s excursion through the alphabet is witty and smart.  I was reluctant to finally leave the classroom.” -- Mark Dunn, author of Ella Minnow Pea

Reviews

Following up on his Encyclopedia of the Ancient Greek World, Sacks here delves into the origins of the Roman alphabet. Its beginnings appear to lie with Semitic-speaking mercenaries in Egypt, who borrowed from their overlords' hieroglyphics to create a system of sound-representing signs, many of which survive today in the Hebrew alphabet. Along the way, the Indo-European Greek language borrowed the Semitic alphabet of the Phoenicians, which when transmuted by the Romans gave us 24 of our 26 modern English letters. The bulk of the book offers beautifully illustrated capsule biographies of all 26, including J and V, which did not enter regular usage until the 17th century and were not standardized until the 19th. Beyond initial "A", the Sacks covers the first letters of several of the words for God; M, which begins an extraordinary number of the words for "Mother"; and "O," which requires the most shaping by the lips. There are essays on lexicographers (Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster, among others), on printing, and on how the letter X came to stand for the unknown in mathematics because Descartes's printer was running out of Ys and Zs to print all of the mathematician's equations. Such anecdotes, and the care evinced throughout, make this a demanding gem of popular linguistic history, and any book that includes a chapter called "The Birth of `V'ness" certainly avoids taking itself too seriously.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From aleph (ancient forerunner of our own a), discovered carved in Egyptian stone as part of the oldest known alphabetic inscription, all the way to the repeated Zs that help give the rock group ZZ Top its name, journalist Sacks unfolds the romance and magic of the English alphabet. Although Sacks writes for nonspecialists, he distills an impressive range of scholarship into his examination of the alphabet's complex cultural history. Readers learn about the astonishing recent archaeological discoveries in central Egypt that have overturned previous theories locating the alphabet's origins in ancient Canaan. We likewise learn about the surprising linguistic flexibility that allowed a single alphabet to jump language barriers around the world, thus giving most of the globe's literate populations recognizably related scripts. This is a delightfully entertaining and engrossing tale of how the score of Roman letters that arrived in England in the seventh century eventually gave us everything from the poetry of William Shakespeare to the official grades used by meat inspectors to evaluate chicken. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Broadway Books
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0767911725
• ISBN 13: 9780767911726
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416