The Calcutta review Volume 113 - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1901 Excerpt: ... THE CALCUTTA REVIEW. No. 226--OGTOBER 1901. Art. I.--THE STORY OF THE ALPHABET THIS little book of 217 duodecimo pages has appeared at the end of the Nineteenth Century most opportunely. What a contrast a book on the same subject published at the end of the Eighteenth Century would have presented I Every child is supposed to "know his Alphabet, or his A. B. C," and popular opinion would credit Noah with such a knowledge; but it must be admitted by careful students, that Moses did not know his Alphabet or even Solomon,t and whatever books are credited to them must have been handed down orally, or in a pre-alphabetic form of script,f "Pictorial, or Ideographic, or Syllabic," not in separate abstract symbols or letters for each vowel or consonantsound, which constitute an Alphabet. Mr. Clodd is well known from his previous works, and his present volume is charming, whether to young students, or old hands: Words in Hieroglyphic Ideograms, such as the Egyptian, are eye-pictures, and have no relation to sound in their structure. Words in Alphabetic Symbols are Earpictures, and are built up with reference to the sound, which each symbol is fashioned to represent. The invention of Writing in any form alone made it possible to pass from Barbarism to Civilization. The final supercession of all other forms of writing by the Alphabet marks an Epoch in the History of Mankind. It is notorious, that the ordinary Numerals used throughout Europe speak to the eye only, and each Nation describes them in his own Language, as the figures 1, 2, 3, etc., represent an arithmetical idea, and are not symbols for a letter. In China to this day the form of writing of the Chinese Wen-Lt is for ' oculation 1 only, and not for pronunciation, and the reader of a book in thfct form The St...