Alpha Beta

How 26 Letters Shaped the Western World

By John Man

As revealed in this book, it all started with scratches on clay, progressed to designs on walls and papyrus, then, slowly, the alphabets began to emerge. We now take them for granted. But it was a long, dull process. That’s what we like to hear. We like long, dull processes.

The book points out fascinating things about languages. For example, what you see is not always what you get, particularly in English:

The “sh” sound: is in shoe  but it is also is in — but spelled differently — in nation, mansion,, suspicion, ocean, conscious, chaperon, schist, fuchsia, and nauseous.

The “ugh” sound — is spelled the same in  but pronounced differently — in tough, bough, cough, hiccough, thorough, laugh, and through 

These aberrations are avoided, the book says, in the world’s most perfect language —Korean — which comes to closest to “what you see is what you get” (“WYSIWYG”).    

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