The Writing Systems of the World

"Writing Systems of the World" by FLORIAN COULMAS This book elaborates the Writing Systems of the world's languages, including the ancient script of Egypt, Cuneiform, Chinese, Semitic, and the writing of ancient India. It further examines the alphabets of the ancient languages, including the divine nature attributed to the written word and its power. It examines the first mnemonic devices, and their support of MEMORY. Semitic languages use some of these, I know. It also studies the use of writing in regulation social behavior. Although this book is not profusely illustrated, it is adequately illustrated to be demonstrative. The book also studies the evolution of language its evolution from single syllables to complete words. It has some very illustrative "Language Trees" that show the continuity of historic dialects.

I enjoyed this book very much. It was fascinating, and unlike "Reading the Past" (also very good), the information on various language families and regions of the world is interconnected. My only criticism is that the book is in bad need of an editor. While Coulmas presents a great deal of information, he has a rather noteable tendancy of belabouring a point and rambling on and on. (He beats dead horses well past death and decomposition.) The untranslated quotes in French are a bit frustrating, and his penchant for quoting Greek seems a bit overdone. The book could easily be edited to two-thirds its size and not loose a single jewel of information.

The book details the origins of the world's writing systems and traces their development to the present day. The central relationship is set between the written and the spoken word, and poses hypothetical scenarios of the way in which writing has affected human language. While describing his views on why the Chinese pictogram, a seemingly 3000 year-old cumbersome system, is in fact very useful, the author also ranges over the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Near Eastern cuniforms and Semitic, Classical and Indo-European writing systems. The book offers many black and white drawings and illustrations.This is a highly recommended book for all, but especially those with interest in linguistics and the history, evolution and importance of writing.