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Book: An Exploration of Writing

Chapter: Segments and Alphabets

DOI: 10.1558/equinox.30863

Blurb:

The chapter begins again with English, this time—bouncing off the familiar ghoti = fish example—showing some of the regularities of the supposedly chaotic English orthography and its history, and not embracing script reform proposals. It then moves back in time (i.e., more to less familiar), touching on the way the runic, Ogham, and Yiddish alphabets. The Eastern alphabets, besides the wellknown Armenian, Georgian, and Slavic ones, include two that the author believes have never before been discussed in popular treatments of writing: the Avestan, of pre-Islamic Iran, and the recently deciphered Udi of the Christian Caucasus.

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