David Sacks has embarked on a fun, lively, and learned excursion into the alphabet–and into cultural history–in Letter Perfect. ...
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reviews
Nov 15, 2010
Maurizio
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Anche questo libro era fuori commercio, e l'ho acquistato di seconda mano dai fondi di una biblioteca (dello Stoke-on-Trent College), dove in effetti non era mai stato chiesto in prestito. Il tema, come dice il titolo stesso, è l'alfabeto, inteso come insieme delle 26 lettere che lo compongono; dopo un capitolo introduttivo che racconta come dal primo alfabeto (semitico ma egizio, precedente a quello fenicio) l'idea sia stata man mano presa da altre popolazioni che se lo adattavano ai propri suo
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Dec 10, 2011
Caroline
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Language Visible is a most excellent book. Finally, all my questions about the alphabet are answered: why we have hard and soft Gs, two sizes of letters, and two different styles of printing lowercase a. Now I know why the Spanish J is pronounced as the English H and why C is duplicated by K and S. It feels like I have been waiting for this for years.
It is written in an informal, conversational style, with the occasional dip into irreverence. Originally a series of magazine articles More...
It is written in an informal, conversational style, with the occasional dip into irreverence. Originally a series of magazine articles More...
Dec 11, 2009
kingshearte
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"David Sacks has embarked on a fun, lively, and learned excursion into the alphabet - and into cultural history - in Letter Perfect. Beginning with the earliest known alphabetic inscriptions (circa 1800 BC), recently discovered by archaeologists in Egypt, the book traces the history of our alphabet through the ancient Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans and up through medieval Europe to the present day. But the heart of the book is the twenty-six fact-filled "biographies" of letters A
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Sep 06, 2011
Sammy
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An interesting, if overlong, experiment. "The Alphabet" is a much-needed book and wonderful reading for people like myself. Because my personal and professional passions lie with writing and language, I'm always frustrated by dimwits who want to "Reform" the language, or somehow make it "easier" and "more logical". Look, every language has its advantages and disadvantages: this is what comes of being an organic creation, particularly for our culture which
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Jan 22, 2011
Nikki
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This book tells the story of how our letters came to be. The story of many of them is similar. Start with the Phoenicians, move to the Greeks, an ill-understood stop with the Etruscans, (or is that the other way around?) then the Romans, then Anglo-Saxons with some input from the French. The books is interesting and accessible (reviewers call it "lively" and "engaging") but there is quite a bit of overlap because of the way he chose to tell it--one letter at a time. Because l
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Aug 18, 2010
Kristine
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Technically I haven't actually finished, but since every chapter is sort of a stand-alone essay on a letter, I'm going to claim I like the book.
I think the intro is worth reading, even if you go no further with the book. The origins of our letters are tied up in the history of human civilization, and it's fascinating to read how each letter came into being, and then evolved through borrowings and adaptations, both in sound and in shape. A used to be upside-down, and started as a More...
I think the intro is worth reading, even if you go no further with the book. The origins of our letters are tied up in the history of human civilization, and it's fascinating to read how each letter came into being, and then evolved through borrowings and adaptations, both in sound and in shape. A used to be upside-down, and started as a More...
Dec 28, 2011
David
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Sacks' tour though the history of the alphabet is enjoyable, and he does a fabulous job of tracing the development of sounds and pronunciation through time. The lengths of the chapters get steadily shorter the further you get into the book - A is a lot longer than T, for instance, even though those two have similar prominence in English (the old linotype order was ETAOIN SHRDLU - that doesn't quite match the actual letter frequency, but is close enough for an approximation). Mixed in with this
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Jun 22, 2011
Morphidae
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The only reason it got a lower rating is because I found the subject matter boring at times. The writing was good and when I learned more about the "culture" of a letter rather than the "technical specs" of how it evolved from its first form, I enjoyed myself. An example is how "Ye" as is "Ye Old English Shoppe" came about. The form Y was used to symbolize the letter thorn which represented the sound "th." Another piece of interest is the difficu
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Feb 11, 2011
Steve
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Sachs provides a sporadically excellent description of the historic development of the alphabet. As opposed to a system based on actual visual representations of the word, pictographs, or writing systems based on symbols to represent words, logograms, the recognisable series of 26 letters can re-combine to form countless patterns of phonemes. Such flexibility can also be transferred across different languages, making the alphabet one of history's most enduring legacies. From it's emergence in Eg
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Dec 08, 2011
Rebecca
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I grew up with two linguistics professors for parents, and I tend to be unimpressed by vernacular linguistics books if only because I grew up hearing so much of this stuff at the dinner table. But Sacks branches out in so many different directions (often kind of free-associating, though productively) and includes such recent discoveries that almost all of this was fresh for me. It was little repetitive, as if he didn't trust that people would read the book sequentially. He's probably right that
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Dec 06, 2010
Erin
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Okay, I was totally confused in the library since I could've sworn the title was "Letter Perfect", but I found it (after some searching) as "Language Visible". So, apparently they did a title switcharoo at some point. If you're looking for this one, check under both titles. (Edit: The hardbound version will be titled "Language Visible", the paperback "Letter Perfect". The British version has yet another title.)
I haven't quite finished this yet, b More...
I haven't quite finished this yet, b More...
Dec 19, 2011
Black Elephants
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It was during a free day in Fukuoka in a horrible, ghastly, sinful bookshop that carries a selection of English books that would make any foreigner living in Japan tremble in delight and despair that so much information on science, Japanese literature, modern novels, beach reads, cookbooks, art books could exist for ingestion where I decided to forego another novel of pleasure and improve my mind through "extensive reading". Who would have believed that a randomly chosen book would pro
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May 08, 2008
Pita-eater
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It is easy to forget the alphabet’s individual letters with so many lovely words to distract us. And yet, the Roman alphabet has a fascinating history, just as the English language does. In Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet from A to Z, David Sacks traces the history of the alphabet from 2000 B.C. through present times and devotes a chapter to each letter of the alphabet. Sacks got the idea for the book while writing Encyclopedia of the Ancient Greek World. His fascination wi
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Oct 21, 2007
http://nhw.livejournal.com/490899.html[return][return]I was disappointed. The book can't quite decide whether it's a serious investigation of the history of orthography or a collection of fun trivia snippets. I did learn a lot about the first Semitic alphabet, from which most others are descended, and its descent to us through the Phoenicians, Greeks, Etruscans, Romans and French. But I was disappointed not to learn more about other alphabets than ours - especially the Georgian script which as m
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Apr 28, 2009
Tim
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I like this book a lot. It's a bit repetitive, but that let's each chapter stand on its own. (You wouldn't read them out of order though, would you?) So much of why English words are spelled and pronounced the way they are just makes more sense to me in light of how our alphabet developed. This was a good companion to The Adventure of English.
Jun 11, 2011
Melanie
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I can't help quoting things from this book: have become a rattlebag of alphabet trivia. Fascinating. Takes ages to read because I have to study all the stone carving pictures in details and also read all the asides that are in tiny writing…
Feb 20, 2009
Cindy
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So much fun for a language geek like me. All the strange inconsistencies and illogical conventions of modern spelling suddenly make perfect sense. Intelligent but playful, treating each letter like an old friend with a colorful history.
Jan 07, 2012
I read this book a few years ago and really enjoyed it. It starts with the earliest forms of writing and traces the development of the modern alphabet. I highly recommended this book.
Mar 29, 2010
Liz
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While the information in this book was interesting, it could have used another round of editing. Compiled from a series of essays written for a Canadian newspaper, a lot of the source materials for quotations and examples were repetitive, and whole chunks of information were reiterated in every other chapter. There were whole sidebars to the book printed in size 8 italicized font, a pain to read even for somebody with good eyesight. Many of the examples provided by the author might be appropriat
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Feb 26, 2010
Deirdre
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Yes it is an interesting look at each letter of the alphabet. It looks at how they changed and shifted over the years and the hows and whys of their usage in different languages.
As an occasional calligrapher though, I did find it lacking in that while he mentions letter shift and changes he really doesn't reflect the materials used with letter shifts. I also had to smile when I noticed him discussing how i as j was often used at the beginning and end of words and I would lay odds tha More...
As an occasional calligrapher though, I did find it lacking in that while he mentions letter shift and changes he really doesn't reflect the materials used with letter shifts. I also had to smile when I noticed him discussing how i as j was often used at the beginning and end of words and I would lay odds tha More...
Mar 09, 2010
Paul
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A good read. Pretty predictable in some parts (it went from A through to Z), and some of the letters share history, so you do read a few things more than once. All in all an interesting read.
Jul 05, 2009
Maria
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Good information in general. Some factual errors however which I found a little disappointing (e.g description of the pronunciation of certain letter sounds in French). Mostly seems factually accurate though. I did enjoy the explanation of some of our phrases which use letters in them. I am very much put off though by the atrocious jokes which I hope he was forced to put in by his editor. If the jokes had been left out I would've given this a better rating. Witty they are not.
Dec 28, 2011
BarbaraNathalie
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This little book is a gem for anyone who is enamored with the story of our alphabet. I am an alphaphile(I'll have to look that up to see if I have it right). I love our words and learning all the nuances asociated with them and the letters that create them. This book is a fun fest for anyone who is curious about how our letters came to be. It is also an intelligent discourse about the linguistic nature of letters. Loved it!
Dec 05, 2010
Shannon
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It must've taken David Sacks a million years to do the research for this, which of course implies that he's built his own time machine. Then again, if he has a time machine, it'd probably be easier to do his research. Nevermind. Anyway, great book: the alphabet is truly one of humankind's greatest inventions, followed closely by the internet and kittens.
Dec 28, 2011
Karen
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A fascinating history of the English alphabet, broken down by letter. Sacks tells you who first created the letter (to the best of our knowledge), how it was used and pronounced in its original language, and how it came to be drawn and pronounced as it is today. A wonderful book for nerds. Now being published under an alternate title, Letter Perfect.
Aug 16, 2008
Rob
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An amazing an eminently readable history of the Roman alphabet, beginning some 4000 years ago (a millennium earlier than had been believed until very recently). At a stroke I learned why many dictionaries trace our current letter forms to exactly 113 A.D. (sometimes cited as 114 A.D.), and what "SPQR" stands for.
Sep 15, 2008
Mia
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A fun, engaging read. If you have no knowledge of the subjects covered (linguistic history, typography) it's good, if you have some knowledge and/or strong interest, the constant shifting between history and fluff, and the easy glossing over of more in depth subjects gets distracting.
Feb 26, 2010
Interesting tidbits about our alphabet letters. I will probably keep this book next to my bed for a while and dip into a different letter occasionally. Recommended if you like English language kinds of books.
Jun 23, 2011
Michelle
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This book took a while to get through, but for a language geek like me it was fascinating. He didn't bog the reader down in too much jargon and his writing combined the technical with the witty.
Dec 09, 2007
Jes
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it becomes repetitive with discussing the source of each letter individually. what kept me interested was the spelling and pronunciation differences after the development of the shapes.
