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"Writing Systems"
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Alphabetical : how every letter tells a story
\"How on Earth did we fix upon our twenty-six letters, what do they really mean, and how did we come to write them down in the first place? Michael Rosen takes you on an unforgettable adventure through the history of the alphabet in twenty-six vivid chapters, fizzing with personal anecdotes and fascinating facts. Starting with the mysterious Phoenicians and how sounds first came to be written down, he races on to show how nonsense poems work, pins down the strange story of OK, traces our five lost letters and tackles the tyranny of spelling, among many many other things. His heroes of the alphabet range from Edward Lear to Phyllis Pearsall (the inventor of the A-Z), and from the two scribes of Beowulf to rappers. Each chapter takes on a different subject - whether it's codes, umlauts or the writing of dictionaries. Rosen's enthusiasm for letters positively leaps off the page, whether it's the story of his life told through the typewriters he's owned or a chapter on jokes written in a string of gags and word games. This is the book for anyone who's ever wondered why Hawaiian only has a thirteen-letter alphabet or how exactly to write down the sound of a wild raspberry\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
A multi-dimensional framework for characterizing the role of writing system variation in literacy learning: a case study in Malayalam
Most children across the world learn to read and write in non-alphabetic orthographies such as abjads (e.g., Arabic), abugidas (e.g., Ethiopic Ge’ez), and morphosyllabaries (e.g., Chinese). However, most theories of reading, reading development, and dyslexia derive from a relatively narrow empirical base of research in English—an outlier alphabetic orthography—and a handful of mainly Western European Roman alphabets. Consideration of the full spectrum of the world’s writing systems reveals multiple dimensions of writing system complexity, each of which could possibly create obstacles for the developing reader. Daniels and Share (Sci Stud Read 22:101–116, 2018) proposed a multi-dimensional framework for assessing a range of writing system characteristics likely to challenge literacy acquisition: linguistic distance, non-linearity, visual uniformity and complexity, historical orthographic inertia, spelling constancy despite morphophonemic alternation, omission of phonological elements, allography, dual purpose letters, ligaturing, and symbol inventory size. The present study examines the applicability of these ten dimensions to understanding reading and spelling acquisition in Malayalam, a non-European language written in a non-alphabetic script. Malayalam, a south Indian language spoken by some 35 million people, employs a writing system typical of the Brahmi-derived Indic scripts used by almost two billion people throughout South and Southeast Asia. We found that a majority (7/10) of the D&S dimensions are indeed useful for understanding the challenges of learning to read and write in Malayalam. Three dimensions are not applicable, and an additional dimension, word length, needs to be added to the framework. The popular uni-dimensional approach of characterizing orthographies as shallow/transparent or deep/opaque (mis)classifies Malayalam as a highly transparent or shallow script simply because the characters almost invariably have a one-to-one correspondence between symbol and sound. Clearly, however, there are many other dimensions of complexity, such as non-sequentiality, visual similarity, allography, ligaturing, and inventory size, that challenge the learner and prolong the task of learning to read and write. We conclude that the popular uni-dimensional characterization of writing system variation along a single continuum of spelling-to-sound consistency fails to do justice to the multi-dimensional complexity of many, perhaps most, of the world’s writing systems and the challenges they pose for literacy learners.
Journal Article
The theoretical significance of ancient Chinese ethnic writings
From ancient times to the early twentieth century, nearly 40 distinct ancient writing systems of China’s ethnic minorities coexisted with Chinese characters, forming a richly diverse “garden of scripts.” From the perspective of the general theory of writing systems, this paper examines the relationship between language and mnemonic symbols as exemplified by the Poya Songbook, the Ersu Shaba pictographs, and the Naxi Dongba pictographs. It argues that the evolution from mnemonic symbols to syllabic writing systems inherently involves the process of homophonic borrowing. The antiquity of a writing system should not be evaluated solely based on its appearance or communicative function; rather, greater emphasis should be placed on its connection to fixed speech units. Furthermore, this paper explores how the word-formation methods of these ancient writings have enriched the traditional Chinese theory of
Liushu
(the “Six Methods” of character formation) and investigates the factors and primary motivations driving an ethnic group’s decision to adopt a script for recording their native language.
Journal Article
Excel dashboards & reports for dummies
Provides information on how to use Excel for business intelligence, including tips on using PivotTables, Excel charts, and representing data trends, and methods for creating effective dashboards.
Book
Script and Society
By the 13th century BC, the Syrian city of Ugarit hosted an extremely diverse range of writing practices. As well as two main scripts – alphabetic and logographic cuneiform - the site has also produced inscriptions in a wide range of scripts and languages, including Hurrian, Sumerian, Hittite, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Luwian hieroglyphs and Cypro-Minoan. This variety in script and language is accompanied by writing practices that blend influences from Mesopotamian, Anatolian and Levantine traditions together with what seem to be distinctive local innovations. Script and Society: The Social Context of Writing Practices in Late Bronze Age Ugarit explores the social and cultural context of these complex writing traditions from the perspective of writing as a social practice. It combines archaeology, epigraphy, history and anthropology to present a highly interdisciplinary exploration of social questions relating to writing at the site, including matters of gender, ethnicity, status and other forms of identity, the relationship between writing and place, and the complex relationships between inscribed and uninscribed objects. This forms a case- study for a wider discussion of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of writing practices in the ancient world.
eBook
Because digital writing matters : improving student writing in online and multimedia environments
\"How to apply digital writing skills effectively in the classroom, from the prestigious National Writing Project As many teachers know, students may be adept at text messaging and communicating online but do not know how to craft a basic essay. In the classroom, students are increasingly required to create web-based or multi-media productions that also include writing. Since writing in and for the online realm often defies standard writing conventions, this book defines digital writing and examines how best to integrate new technologies into writing instruction. Shows how to integrate new technologies into classroom lessons. Addresses the proliferation of writing in the digital age. Offers a guide for improving students' online writing skills. The book is an important manual for understanding this new frontier of writing for teachers, school leaders, university faculty, and teacher educators.\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Handbook of second and foreign language writing
The Handbooks of Applied Linguistics provide a state-of-the-art description of established and emerging areas of Applied Linguistics. Each volume gives an overview of the field, explains the most important traditions and their findings, identifies the gaps in current research, and gives perspectives for future directions.
eBook
Profiling Adult L2 Readers in English Bridge Programs: A Not-So-Simple View of L1 Effect
This study aimed to validate the Simple View of Reading (SVR) in L2 English readers with alphabetic and morphosyllabic L1 writing system backgrounds. Forty-five L2 English learners enrolled in American university bridge programs completed a set of tasks that measured real word decoding efficiency, pseudoword decoding efficiency, linguistic (listening) comprehension, passage reading comprehension, and word meaning inferencing. There were two major findings: (1) only pseudoword decoding efficiency predicted passage reading comprehension in learners with a morphosyllabic L1, whereas both pseudoword decoding efficiency and linguistic comprehension were significant predictors in learners with an alphabetic L1; (2) pseudoword decoding efficiency was a significant predictor of word meaning inferencing in learners with a morphosyllabic L1, and moderated the effect of real word decoding efficiency on word meaning inference in learners with an alphabetic L1. The findings indicate the complex relationships among word decoding, linguistic comprehension, and passage reading comprehension in adult L2 English learners.
Journal Article