Word: alphabet
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...pitfalls left by its colonial past, heads have been rolling. The headlines of the past two months testify that Africa is still a continent of chaos and contradiction. Since the year began, crises have erupted at a rate of one a week, and it seems that in the alphabet of independent Africa, A is for anarchy, B is for bedlam, and C is for coup...
...even F.D.R.'s New Deal (WPA, PWA, NRA, etc., etc.) managed to cook up such a rich alphabet soup. Government agencies, politicians, labor unions, all 22 states and 13 political parties are known by their initials. BAA, BLA, BAP, BAM and BUM are prominent banks. MIC is the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, while MEC is the Ministry of Education and Culture, and MAC is a political action group called the Movimento Anticomunista. For slum clearance there is nothing quite so efficient as MUD (Democratic Urbanization Movement). And tax evaders must constantly watch out for the dread SFPRICFN, which...
...Libya. Nominally white, they get their colorful name from the dark blue robes they wear. The robes are impregnated with a cheap dye that rubs off and stains the Tuaregs' skins a glossy, metallic blue. The Tuaregs seem to be related to the Phoenicians, write with an ancient alphabet called tifinagh that can be read from right to left, left to right, up or down. But they use it often to compose erotic poetry or scrawl obscenities on lonely desert rocks. Lukewarm Moslems, the Tuaregs twist the usual Islamic custom by insisting that their men go veiled while...
TOYS BY ARTISTS-Parsons, 24 West 57th. A grab bag from Santa's other helpers: a black-coiffed, sad-eyed Marisol Doll by Marisol; a block-toy chess set by George Ortman; William King's Pop guns; Lanny Powers' alphabet blocks, in which M stands for Marilyn Monroe. Among the playful creative elves: Andy Warhol, Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Alexander Calder, Richard Lindner, Richard Anuszkiewicz. Through...
...smattering of Spanish or Portuguese. The institute man then points to a hut, tree, rabbit, or other familiar object and asks the Indian the word for it. As he learns the Indian dialect, the linguist records the sounds on tape. Then, using basic phonetic symbols, he constructs an alphabet for the language. The process can be exasperating. One tribe of suspicious Bolivian Indians refused to cooperate, convinced that the whole thing was a plot to steal their language. When linguists tackled the Cocama tribe in Peru, they found that the men spoke one language, the women another...