A is for Ox: A Short History of the Alphabet

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Interestingly, prior to the experience of orality, ‘as children, we are not only in experience, we are experience’, says the author quoting in support the Walt Whitman poem mentioned at the beginning. We are so used to platitudes intoning the value of reading and writing that we may have forgotten to ask what literacy really is. Not only myths, religious texts and precepts for daily living thus got built up and handed down, but folklore and songs as well. For example, one of the reasons some languages are read left to right, right to left, or both ways, is because it mimics the lines created by oxen ploughing fields!

A goose could stand for the word "goose" gb, the sound gb, or — followed by a glyph of a seated god — the name of the earth-god Geb. By reminding us to understand reading and writing as cognitive and social acts, Sanders places the issue of literacy squarely where it belongs: at the center of contemporary social and cultural debate. I don't know much about linguistics so I can't speak for the authenticity of what Davies is saying but it's certainly well presented, nicely detailed and easy to follow for the beginner. By tracing the long history of literacy in the West, Sanders demonstrates how the culture of electronic media is changing both cognitive development and social interaction.Television does not stimulate the brain; ‘it feeds both stimulus and response into the infant-child brain as a single-paired effect.

Of all the world's writing systems, hieroglyphs may be among the most mysterious to those of us who speak and read English and French. Superseded by several later works, but is freely available online with line illustrations and some black and white photos.Whether they were miners, guides, or traders picking up gemstones for transport, they would have marvelled at the colourful, lifelike hieroglyphs carved into the walls of the temple to Hathor, goddess of turquoise, above the mining camps. This amount includes seller specified domestic postage charges as well as applicable international postage, dispatch, and other fees. By printing in black and white the full inscriptions on stone, clay and pottery depicted in photographs, Davies enhances the experience of those images, and somehow the tinting of the images makes it easier to match the markings with the print.