Re: Book

Review:

I have the book being written about. While it is one of the best sources
for the various TAI writing systems, and other writing systems of Southeast
Asia, short of owning all volumes of Bulletin l'Ecole Francais d'Extreme
Orient, it doesn't compare to D&B's handling of Maldivian, Arabic originated
scripts, or Eurolanguages. It is a good companion to D&B, as it fills in
many of the gaps.

One of the major strong points is that it has copious
references/bibliograpies. Another major strong point is that it, in detail,
deals with scripts that nobody else seems to have dealt with, i.e. Soyombo
script, Cham script, Nubian, etc.
One of the major bad points, is that it often copies tables and data from
flawed sources like Jensen and Coulmas. Another major dissappointment is
that phonetic representation wasn't consistent i.e. IPA, as it is in D&B's
WWS. For me, a major shortcomming was the way it handled Javanese/Kawi.
Since Aksara Jawa, in theory should be able to transcribe Sanskrit, it
should therefore possess the aspirated series as well as the normal
consonats. In Sekai Moji Jiten, the /ch/ was indicated as a single
hyphen......not that it was missing, but that it was a hyphen. Big boo-boo.
There are a number of other annoying mistakes, but so far, I haven't found
any completely unforgiveable one's (such as having Dives Akuru character
graph being upside down in Jensen)

(I'm still waiting for a book that deals with African Scripts rather than
just small blurbs.....both Sekai Moji Jiten and D&B's WWS are poor in this
aspect.........Where's Dr. Dalby when you need him?)

However, unless you are a script junkie, and can read Japanese like me, it
isn't worth Y48,000+. Even still, it will put a strain on a marriage....at
least for a couple of months.

Best regards,

Jason Glavy

----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Heijdra (by way of Michael Everson)" <everson@...>
To: <qalam@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 07, 2002 9:40 AM
Subject: Book


For all script enthousiasts:

A supplement (bekkan) to the Sanseido Encyclopaedia of Linguistics
(Japanese: Gengogaku Daijiten) has appeared under the title Sekai Moji
Jiten: (Scripts and Writing Systems of the World). It is a very dense, hefty
volume of 1222 pages. It treats historical and current scripts, in general
in much, much greater detail (and many more varieties; Nora script, anyone?)
than Bright & Daniels. A great strength is of course Asian scripts (India,
China, SE Asia), which tend to get short shift in general Western
publications. It's definitely a major work, combining the characteristics
of, but going beyond both books of the Bright & Daniels variety, and those
of the Dirringer/Jensen compendia kind.

Of course, the entries (which have bibliographies, many in Western
languages) are in Japanese; I don't think the numerous illustrations are
sufficient for a non-Japanese reader, even if headings have an English
equivalent. Moreover, it is very pricy: I just checked at Amazon Japan, and
the price quoted is Y48,000. Nevertheless, if you're serious about scripts
and know Japanese, you should check it out.

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Martin Heijdra
Chinese Bibliographer
East Asian Library and the Gest Collection
Frist Campus Center, Room 317
Princeton University
33 Frist Campus Center
Princeton, NJ 08544 USA


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