Kategoria BISAC: Language Arts & Disciplines >> Alphabets & Writing Systems

Minglang Zhou's highly erudite and well-researched volume on the policies concerning writing reforms for China's minorities since 1949 provides an original and well-reasoned summary of a complex process. It documents how different script reforms meet dramatically different fates according to local preferences, history, cross-border ties, and the vitality of previously-used scripts. It convincingly shows that no single variable is decisive in the success of a script, and that language planners' fixation with technical details is doomed to failure, without careful coordination of extra-code...

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications.

It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other.

The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists,...

Throughout most of the history of linguistics, the primacy of the spoken word over the written word has been virtually axiomatic. Scholars working at what is perceived as the core of linguistic science, on grammar, sociolinguistics, phonetics, phonology, have generally perceived the written word as merely the means of representing the true matter of linguistics, spoken language, with varying degrees of efficiency. Yet the written word has demonstrably shaped the course of languages, been the means of their maintenance or, under different circumstances, their downfall. Written language has...

The Oxford Dictionary of Difficult Words is designed to meet this need. A portable reference, it features more than 10,000 entries...

The Second Edition of this widely used work offers new features that will make it even more useful:

* A completely revised alphabetical listing that defines nearly 1,000 terms used by scholars of formal rhetoric from classical Greece to the present day...

Your boyfriend says you have no elan, is he telling you you're all out of yogurt? Starting to wish you'd paid more attention in English class? Don't worry, it's never too late to develop a million...

Suitable for college and high school students and those learning on their own, this fully illustrated coursebook provides comprehensive instruction in the history and practical techniques of Chinese calligraphy. No previous knowledge of the language is required to follow the text or complete the lessons.

The work covers three major areas: 1) descriptions of Chinese characters and their components, including stroke types, layout patterns, and indications of sound and meaning; 2) basic brush techniques; and 3) the social, cultural, historical, and philosophical underpinnings of Chinese...

Students who have learned to read and write the kanji taught in Japanese schools run into the same difficulty that Japan university students themselves face: the number of characters included in the approved list is not sufficient for advanced reading and writing. Although each academic specialization requires supplementary kanji of its own, there is considerable overlap. With that in mind, this book employs the same methods as Volumes 1 and 2 of Remembering the Kanji to introduce additional characters useful for upper-level proficiency, bringing the total of all three volumes to 3,000...

For those with a competitive nature and those who want to increase their vocabulary while improving their spelling, this is a self-contained spelling adventure for any individual of any age A series of tests ranging from 3 to 50 questions are not just related to spelling but also pronunciation and...