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"Handel, Zev J. (Zev Joseph), author"
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Sinography : the borrowing and adaptation of the Chinese script
\"In the more than 3,000 years since its invention, the Chinese script has been adapted many times to write languages other than Chinese, including Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Zhuang. In Sinography: Cross-linguistic Perspectives of the Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script, Zev Handel provides a comprehensive analysis of how the structural features of these languages constrained and motivated methods of script adaptation. This comparative study reveals the universal principles at work in the borrowing of logographic scripts. By analyzing and explaining these principles, Handel advances our understanding of how early writing systems have functioned and spread, providing a new framework that can be applied to the history of scripts beyond East Asia, such as Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Chinese Characters across Asia
A fascinating story of writing across cultures and
time While other ancient nonalphabetic
scripts—Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and
Mayan hieroglyphs—are long extinct, Chinese characters,
invented over three thousand years ago, are today used by well
over a billion people to write Chinese and Japanese. In
medieval East Asia, the written Classical Chinese language knit
the region together in a common intellectual enterprise that
encompassed religion, philosophy, historiography, political
theory, art, and literature. Literacy in Classical Chinese set
the stage for the adaptation of Chinese characters into ways of
writing non-Chinese languages like Vietnamese and Korean, which
differ dramatically from Chinese in vocabularies and
grammatical structures. Because of its unique status in the
modern world, myths and misunderstandings about Chinese
characters abound. Where does this writing system, so different
in form and function from alphabetic writing, come from? How
does it really work? How did it come to be used to write
non-Chinese languages? And why has it proven so resilient? By
exploring the spread and adaptation of the script across two
millennia and thousands of miles,
Chinese Characters across Asia addresses these
questions and provides insights into human cognition and
culture. Written in an approachable style and meant for readers
with no prior knowledge of Chinese script or Asian languages,
it presents a fascinating story that challenges assumptions
about speech and writing.
eBook