Japanese Made Easy is a complete self-study guide that allows readers to begin using simple, everyday Japanese vocabulary and sentences from the first day! This handy resource features: Practical exercises to teach you the 30 most common Japanese sentence patterns Notes on the key points of Japanese grammar, sentence structure and vocabulary A detailed glossary of Japanese words and an index of vocabulary and grammar Sentences for everyday social situations encountered by visitors to Japan In this completely revised edition, vocabulary and sentences are shown in Japanese script, as well as romanized Japanese and English. This book includes many new dialogues, cultural notes, illustrations and updated vocabulary.

Epigraphic Approaches to Indus Writing is a comprehensive look at one of the last undeciphered Old World scripts. It has defied decipherment for 90 years because of the terse nature of the texts and the lack of a comprehensive corpus and detailed sign list. This book presents the analysis of a comprehensive, computer-based corpus using the most detailed sign list yet compiled for the Indus script. Custom computer programs allowed the verification of the sign list and the compilation of statistics regarding sign distribution and use. Among the questions addressed are: How do you create an epigraphic database? How do you define a sign? What is the Indus number system like? Where did the Indus script come from and what is the Indus language(s)? Bryan Wells is an archaeologist, epigrapher and geographer who has excavated on the west and east coasts of North America and in Baluchistan (Pakistan). Wells has studied the Indus script since 1992, and holds a PhD in anthropology from Harvard University.

The decoding of Linear B is one of the world's greatest stories: from the discovery of a cache of ancient tablets recording a lost prehistoric language to the dramatic solution of the riddle nearly seventy years later, it exerts a mesmerising pull on the imagination. But this captivating story is missing a crucial piece. Two men have dominated Linear B in popular history: Arthur Evans, the intrepid Victorian archaeologist who unearthed Linear B at Knossos and Michael Ventris, the dashing young amateur who produced a solution. But there was a third figure: Alice Kober, without whose painstaking work, recorded on pieces of paper clipped from hymn-sheets and magazines and stored in cigarette boxes in her Brooklyn loft, Linear B might still remain a mystery. Drawing on Kober's own papers - only made available recently - Margalit Fox provides the final piece of the enigma, and along the way reveals how you decipher a language when you know neither its grammar nor its alphabet as well as the stories behind other ancient languages, like the dancing-man Rongorongo of Easter Island.

Edward Hincks (1792-1866), the Irish Assyriologist and decipherer of Mesopotamian cuneiform, was born in Cork and spent forty years of his life at Killyleagh, Co. Down, where he was the Church of Ireland Rector. He was educated at Midleton College, Co. Cork and Trinity College, Dublin, where he was an exceptionally gifted student. With the decipherment of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs by Jean Francois Champollion in 1822, Hincks became one of that first group of scholars to contribute to the elucidation of the language, chronology and religion of ancient Egypt. But his most notable achievement was the decipherment of Akkadian, the language of Babylonia and Assyria, and its complicated cuneiform writing system.Between 1846 and 1852 Hincks published a series of highly significant papers by which he established for himself a reputation of the first order as a decipherer. Most of the letters in these volumes have not been previously published. Much of the correspondence relates to nineteenth-century archaeological and linguistic discoveries, but there are also letters concerned with ecclesiastical affairs, the Famine and the Hincks family.Between 1850 and 1852 Edward Hincks completed the main steps in the decipherment of Akkadian. In 1851 he announced his sensational discovery of the name of the Biblical king Jehu 'son of Omri' on the famous Black Obelisk of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III, which Layard had discovered at Nimrud (ancient Kalhu). On other clay tablets he identified the names of the king Menahem of Samaria, the place Yadnan (Cyprus), and people referred to as 'Ionians'. His discoveries prompted Austen Henry Layard, the excavator of Nimrud (he thought it was Nineveh) to invite him to prepare translations of the inscriptions for his bestselling Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon.Layard was also instrumental in persuading the British Museum to employ Hincks for a year to transcribe and translate cuneiform texts. In 1856 Hincks began to correspond with Henry Fox Talbot, pioneer of photography, who was also interested in cuneiform. The variety and richness of the correspondence provides a unique insight into the world of Victorian intellectual and cultural life. Amongst Hincks' correspondents were Samuel Birch, Franz Bopp, Friedrich Georg Grotefend, William Rowan Hamilton, Christian Lassen, Austen Henry Layard, Edwin Norris, George Cecil Renouard, and Peter le Page Renouf. Volume I was published in 2007 and Volume III will be published in 2009.

Top 100 Books on Science, American Scientist, 2001 In 1992, the University of Texas Press published Before Writing, Volume I: From Counting to Cuneiform and Before Writing, Volume II: A Catalog of Near Eastern Tokens. In these two volumes, Denise Schmandt-Besserat set forth her groundbreaking theory that the cuneiform script invented in the Near East in the late fourth millennium B.C.—the world's oldest known system of writing—derived from an archaic counting device. How Writing Came About draws material from both volumes to present Schmandt-Besserat's theory for a wide public and classroom audience. Based on the analysis and interpretation of a selection of 8,000 tokens or counters from 116 sites in Iran, Iraq, the Levant, and Turkey, it documents the immediate precursor of the cuneiform script.

Edward Hincks (1792-1866), the Irish Assyriologist and one of the decipherers of Mesopotamian cuneiform, was born in Cork and spent forty years of his life at Killyleagh, Co. Down, where he was the Church of Ireland Rector. He was educated at Middleton College, Co. Cork and Trinity College, Dublin, where he was an exceptionally gifted student. With the decipherment of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs by Jean Francois Champollion in 1822, Hincks became one of that first group of scholars to contribute to the elucidation of the language, chronology and religion of ancient Egypt. But his most notable achievement was the decipherment of Akkadian, the language of Babylonia and Assyria, and its complicated cuneiform writing system. Between 1846 and 1852, Hincks published a series of highly significant papers by which he established for himself a reputation of the first order as a decipherer. Most of the letters in these volumes have not been previously published. Much of the correspondence relates to nineteenth-century archaeological and linguistic discoveries, but there are also letters concerned with ecclesiastical affairs, the Famine and the Hincks family. The letters in volume 1 cover the period from the 1820s when Hincks was a young clergyman and scholar, applying himself assiduously to his family and parish duties, and vigorously pursuing his study of the ancient Egyptian language, to the years 1846-9 during which he announced his epoch-making discoveries in the decipherment of Akkadian and its cuneiform writing system. There are dozens of letters from friends and colleagues, which include exchanges on a variety of subjects and offer a fascinating picture of scholarly and intellectual activity, as well as of the political and ecclesiastical events of the time. Hincks' unique research never diverted him from his religious and civic responsibilities, especially during times of crisis like the Famine. Amongst Hincks' correspondents were Samuel Birch, Franz Bopp, Friedrich Georg Grotefend, William Rowan Hamilton, Christian Lassen, Austen Henry Layard, Edwin Norris, George Cecil Renouard, and Peter le Page Renouf. Volumes 2 and 3 will be published in 2008 and 2009 respectively.

The first critical study of writing without language In recent years, asemic writing-writing without language-has exploded in popularity, with anthologies, a large-scale art exhibition, and flourishing interest on sites like tumblr, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram. Yet this burgeoning, fascinating field has never received a dedicated critical study. Asemic fills that gap, proposing new ways of rethinking the nature of writing. Pioneered in the work of creators such as Henri Michaux, Roland Barthes, and Cy Twombly, asemic writing consolidated as a movement in the 1990s. Author Peter Schwenger first covers these "asemic ancestors" before moving to current practitioners such as Michael Jacobson, Rosaire Appel, and Christopher Skinner, exploring how asemic writing has evolved and gained importance in the contemporary era. Asemic includes intriguing revelations about the relation of asemic writing to Chinese characters, the possibility of asemic writing in nature, and explanations of how we can read without language. Written in a lively style, this book will engage scholars of contemporary art and literary theory, as well as anyone interested in what writing was and what it is now in the process of becoming.

If you think you know your alphabet, think again. Drawing from mythology, cosmology, history, the Bible, literature, and esoteric and conventional sources, this book takes the reader on a tour of each of the twenty-six letters of the Roman alphabet. In chapters that are descriptive, illustrative and diverse, we are shown the history and development of every letter, how its shape evolved, how its characteristics were encoded, and how its history, attributes, and meanings were reflected in myth, literature, science and religion. Rich in surprises and serendipities, profusely illustrated with related drawings from ancient scripts to present-day digitised computer alphabets, and quoting sources as diverse as James Joyce, Rabelais, Dostoevsky, Mark Twain, Elmer Fudd and Bob Dylan, "The Alphabet" is a book for all those who know their abcs, but perhaps not as well as they imagined.

This is 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' printed in the Shaw alphabet devised by Ronald Kingsley Read.