The World's Writing Systems

by Peter T. Daniels (Editor), William Bright (Editor)

Ranging from cuneiform to shorthand, from archaic Greek to modern Chinese, from Old Persian to modern Cherokee, this is the only available work in English to cover all of the world's writing systems from ancient times to the present. Describing scores of scripts in use now or in the past around the world, this unusually comprehensive reference offers a detailed exploration of the history and typology of writing systems. More than eighty articles by scholars from over a dozen countries explain and document how a vast array of writing systems work--how alphabets, ideograms, pictographs, and hieroglyphics convey meaning in graphic form.
The work is organized in thirteen parts, each dealing with a particular group of writing systems defined historically, geographically, or conceptually. Arranged according to the chronological development of writing systems and their historical relationships within geographical areas, the scripts are divided into the following the ancient Near East, East Asia, Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Additional parts address the ongoing process of decipherment of ancient writing systems; the adaptation of traditional scripts to new languages; new scripts invented in modern times; and graphic symbols for numerical, music, and movement notation.
Each part begins with an introductory article providing the social and cultural context in which the group of writing systems was developed. Articles on individual scripts detail the historical origin of the writing system, its structure (with tables showing the forms of the written symbols), and its relationship to the phonology of the corresponding spoken language. Each writing system is illustrated by a passage of text, and accompanied by a romanized version, a phonetic transcription, and a modern English translation. A bibliography suggesting further reading concludes each entry.
Matched by no other work in English, The World's Writing Systems is the only comprehensive resource covering every major writing system. Unparalleled in its scope and unique in its coverage of the way scripts relate to the languages they represent, this is a resource that anyone with an interest in language will want to own, and one that should be a part of every library's reference collection.

Genres: Linguistics, Language, Nonfiction, History, Reference, Writing

968 pages, Hardcover

First published February 8, 1996

Reviews

[Biblio Curious · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm finished!! This book's astounding! I still can't read 100% of the world's languages. (Shameful monolingual that I am) But I am a bit more familiar with their writing systems.

My shiny review:
http://www.biblioatlas.com/2017/06/th...

[Douglas Summers-Stay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very complete reference book that looks at writing systems throughout the world and through history. These are the various alphabets of the world, from heiroglyphs to Korean to Linear A to ancient Mayan. Some of the most interesting are the ones that are yet undeciphered. A few were invented in historic times by one individual working alone. Ogham script, used in Ireland, is so orderly it seems to be of that sort (though we don't know who invented it.) Many others copied previous alphabets with revisions to make them easier to write in a new medium, or to express sound differences that didin't exist in the older script. One fascinating chapter discussed the development of miniscules (lower-case letters.) Another explained how cuneiform works. And did you know that before Cyrillic, there was a non-Latin based alphabet for Slavic languages that was still surviving into the 1800s?
There's a lot of technical information in here I breezed past, but it's the sort of thing you can just pick up and browse through. They did a great job with the typography.

[Tsai Wei-chieh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kychanov老師寫的西夏文章節、P. Oktor Skjaervo老師寫的用亞蘭文拼寫的伊朗語章節、Kara老師寫的契丹文、女真文與用亞蘭文拼寫的阿爾泰語章節，VDK老師寫的藏文章節值得參考。

[K L R · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a great starting point when I am approaching a text in an unfamiliar language and I have no clue how the writing system works.

[Dan Bain · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best collection of scholarly writings on grammatology. I have never come across a collection as well written and as thorough as this one. It not only explains the use of modern scripts, but gives details about the development of various scripts. The examples are clear and the typesetting is excellent. It is extremely difficult to print in certain non-roman scripts, and the authors of this text did an amazing job of not sacrificing quality while being able to handle so many scripts in on finished text.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books on the topic of writing I have ever read. It is an extremely rich, detailed, and comprehensive (if occasionally prolix work), which delves deeply into the workings and forms of almost every writing system known to man, both living and dead, and even gives plentiful examples of the scripts in use. I particularly love the section of cuneiform--I have never encountered a more in-depth and detailed discussion of that topic in any other general work.

[Raymonds009 · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough and exhaustive examination on this subject. It is both a reference book and a great piece of writing about the interconnectedness as well as the unique qualities of everything from cuneiform to dance notation. I am sure that I will be going back to this many times in the future.

[Jenn]

I pick this fabulous thing up every few years and poke at it some more. Highly ironic that computers made it possible to publish this.