Word: alphabet
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...notable theme of many of the displayed books is the extent to which a particular alphabet or language is rooted in nature or natural phenomena. For example, a 1776 French treatise on alphabets argues that letters come from drawings of objects in which their sound plays a prominent role. The author shows the French word ‘matre,’ then a picture of a mother figure. That picture is stylized until it is transformed into the Chinese character for “mother”—a process that demonstrates how the capital letter...
...Jakarta, plugged in Less a guidebook than an alphabet book of Indonesia's capital, Daniel Ziv's Jakarta Inside Out is a curious hybrid that will have a hard time finding a place on bookstore shelves. Which is a pity. The slim volume is graced with striking photographs of city life, but the paperback format and irreverent, witty observations keep it firmly out of the coffee-table book genre. The 60-odd short essays on subjects ranging from the ubiquitous Asongan (vendors who ply their wares through the city's equally ubiquitous traffic jams), to bules (resident foreigners), nonkong...
...escape that sort of idolatry, I write in English. Readers' adulation and expectations can be a burden for an author and lead to self-censorship. In English, I feel no expectations from old fans and no negative cultural associations. The 26 letters of the English alphabet make me a child again-naive, bold, fearless, primal. I can profane, question and break the stranglehold of traditional Chinese culture. English is my rite of passage...
Listen to government officials in Washington and London, chat with members of the alphabet soup of Iraqi exile groups, and you can come away thinking that such conversations are a dime a dozen. And they may be. In small ways and big ones, the U.S. and its allies are working like termites to undermine the rickety foundations of Saddam's rule. As the U.N. weapons inspectors started their work inside Iraq and President George W. Bush conferred with possible coalition partners at meetings in Prague and Moscow, it was easy to miss a story taking place behind the scenes. Whatever...
...Touch forefinger to nose; say alphabet backwards with extreme precision...