Word: alphabets
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What's in an alphabet? For the six Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union -- Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan -- the answer may be cultural identity. As the 55 million inhabitants of the republics, most of them Muslims, consider a new written form of expression to replace the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, the choice has taken on geopolitical implications. Turkey, whose switch from Arabic to Latin script 64 years ago symbolized its shift toward Western-style democracy, wants the republics to follow its lead. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and Iran are pressuring them to adopt Arabic script -- and, they...
Anderson credited his friends and his stubbornness and his faith, as practiced in their private sanctuary, the Church of the Locked Door. Thomas Sutherland taught him French; he taught the others the sign alphabet for the deaf so they could communicate when they were not allowed to speak. It was Anderson who made the tinfoil chess pieces, the Scrabble games, the Monopoly set. In a sense, as the longest held and best known, Anderson had become a symbol for all the captives, for the 17 Americans who were taken -- the three who died, the 13 others who have retrieved their...
Anderson unfolded the tale, offering his colleagues a bit of a scoop. "One thing we could do -- and my captors may be surprised to learn this -- was talk to each other." Anderson explained that he had learned sign language in high school, a one-handed alphabet that he taught the other captives, improvising new signs for those he had forgotten. On this bleak day, Anderson was relaying silent messages to Sutherland, who would pass them on to Keenan, and so forth. Then calamity struck. "I took off my glasses and dropped them and broke them," he said. "My eyes...
...semi-secret social club. Not the second letter of the alphabet...
...town -- the greater Bay Area, for that matter -- is sicklied o'er with restaurants. Culinary czars rule a population where schoolchildren learn the meaning of chanterelle and shiitake before they study the alphabet. Beer can come in a bottle with a champagne cork, and spaghetti automatically means fennel-raspberry pasta. To ask for a glass of ordinary tap water or regular coffee is to admit that you hail from Tulsa. Pretentious readings of bogus poetry have now been supplanted by SF Net, a coffeehouse computer linkup that enables pseudo avant-gardists to cross-chat electronically over their caffe e latte...