Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet From A to Z

I first heard about David Sacks' book "Language Visible" after reading a favorable review in Discover Magazine some months back. Being a long-time linguist by hobby (my day job is computer programming), I couldn't resist buying the book in hardback, even though normally I hate spending that much money. I was not disappointed.As the author points out on page ix of the preface, this is not intended to be a text book. No doubt expert linguists will be able to point out inaccuracies in the text, or quibble over some of the author's conclusions. For me, on the other hand, this is a veritable treasure trove of fascinating little nuggets of information on our familiar letters. Some of these are things I've known from childhood, looking at the big dictionary in the school library at the start of the section for each letter, where there would be diagrams showing the evolution of the symbol from ancient Phoenician up to the present day. I've picked up other bits of trivia along the way while doing research on historical topics such as the pivotal Battle of Hastings in 1066. Having it all together, under one figurative roof, on my own bookshelf, is priceless.True, the book focuses on the English language, but by necessity it also talks about German, French, Italian and Spanish, as well as earlier languages stretching back to Latin, ancient Greek, Hebrew and Phoenician. With a little ancient Egyptian thrown in for good measure. For that is another nifty thing about this book: it takes advantage of discoveries made as recently as 1999, linking our familiar alphabet to certain exotic-looking Egyptian hieroglyphs. The introductory section tells how a group of Semitic people living in Egypt some 4000 years ago hit upon the ingenious idea of using easily remembered hieroglyphic symbols to represent individual sounds, strung together to form words. All of a sudden ordinary people, be they butchers, bakers or bricklayers, could learn to read and write in a matter of days. Literacy was no longer the exclusive domain of scribes, kings and priests.The main part of the book consists of 26 articles, one for each letter, which were originally published in the Canadian newspaper "Ottawa Citizen" over a period of 26 weeks. While they've been edited somewhat for the book, to include such things as page references to related topics, they don't appear to have been completely rewritten. This is made evident by a certain amount of repetition from one chapter to the next, as might be expected given how a person reading the original "M" newspaper article might not have seen the "A" article published three months earlier.Actually, this suited me just fine: as quickly as I plowed through the book, devouring the whole thing in less than a week, things had a way of running together, so the repetition came in handy. Some day soon I'll have to reread it all ....Besides tracing the history of the letters, the chapters also go into their cultural significance in English, clear up to the start of the 21st Century. David Sacks also has a whimsical sense of humor. For instance, when discussing the silent P in certain Greek-derived words like "psychiatrist", he makes this humorous aside: "As every schoolboy knows, there can be a silent P in swimming".Other features I greatly enjoyed include the family tree linking all of the world's major alphabets back to the Egyptians (with the sole exception of Korea's Hangul alphabet, which was invented from scratch). Also, there are tables listing the ancient Phoenician and modern Hebrew alphabets, plus the original Greek, Etruscan and Latin alphabets. Plus, several of the chapters have inset grey boxes, sometimes extending for pages on end, discussing topics like the following:1) The evolution of writing from Roman times through the Middle Ages, and where lowercase letters come from.2) The impact of the invention of Gutenberg's printing press on the modern world.3) Why there is a noticeable difference between British and American spelling.4) What happened to certain runic letters which appeared in Old English works like Beowulf, but which have disappeared since?Sprinkled throughout the book are answers to a myriad of other questions as well. Have you ever wondered why are there sign posts saying odd things like "Ye Olde English Pub?" Why does the Spanish J sound like H, while the V sounds like B? How did Julius Caesar likely pronounce "Veni, Vidi, Vici"? Why is it important to mind your P's and Q's? Where did the expression "okay" come from? What does "Beowulf" mean?I could go on and on ad nauseam but will stop here. Just get the book and read it for yourself. You won't regret it.

The alphabet is actually a fascinating subject. I knew a bit about the history of the alphabet before reading this book. The book concentrates on the English version of the alphabet. Fact is all alphabets in use have a common origin among second millennium BCE Syro-Phoenicians. The only exceptions to this are the Korean alphabet (which is very clever and deserves to have its own story written) and the Japanese katakana. As different as Russian, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic look, at root it’s all the same letters. It’s called the alphabet because it initial version started with hieroglyphs for “ox” (aleph) and “house” (beth). This book traces how the ox and the house became the code we use to write English. Surprises are revealed, such as the “J”was not considered a separate letter until the 19th century.I gave the book one star shy of five because the Kindle edition is full of links to other pages, from which there is no obvious way to find one’s way back. I finally just ignored the links. They looked interesting, though.

This book was easy to read and had a lot of great information about each letter of the alphabet, tracing most all the way back to the Ancient Egyptians. While I was more likely to groan than laugh at most of the humor in the book, I did enjoy the read and got exactly what I expected out of it. If you are interested in a pretty comprehensive history of each English letter, I definitely would recommend it.

This book examines the history of the alphabet that we all know and love...and by the third chapter I could finally read it without getting the ABC song stuck in my head. Sacks examines the evolution of each letter, its relationship to the other letters, its placement in the alphabet, and pop culture images of the letters. Furthermore, pronunciation shifts and language influences to pronunciation are excellently explained. Sacks presents plenty of examples of how to pronounce certain letter sounds-so much that I think my husband is now afraid I'll be reading aloud. He also gives an entertaining introduction to linguistics-again, causing me to contort my mouth every few lines to examine the difference between voiced and unvoiced sounds, letter pairs, fricatives, sibilants, and all those other wonderful ways we make our language and accents. This is beyond a beginner's book on language (but not much beyond); having a basic understanding of world history, word origins, and foreign languages is the best way to truly enjoy this book. It is not a difficult or boring read, however. I was entertained the entire time I was reading. The only reason it took me more than a week to finish it is that I kept reading parts of it aloud to my husband because of how much I kept learning.

I’ve always been fascinated by the origins of written communication. I found this book fascinating: “Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet From A to Z” —David Sacks. Ironically it also had the worst typography and layout in any printed book I’ve ever seen.* I’d even buy a clean reprint.*Printed on low quality newsprint paper, that soaked up the ink like a paper towel; body copy borderline legibility, worse were the practically illegible (but interesting) scholarly side bars and other entire sections of the book, printed in a ~8 pt serif, ~set solid, over ~50% black dot screen. Terrible production, but the book itself was good. Try to find one with cleaner typography.

Where did the alphabet come from? How has it changed throughout time? Why does X represent the unknown? An introduction and a chapter on each letter answer these and many other questions, some you may not have thought of asking. Illustrations show the evolution of the appearance of each letter, and charts demonstrate the frequency of the letters . An enjoyable read.