Handbook of Scripts and Alphabets Available to Purchase

This well presented collection of 40 of the world’s scripts and alphabets (including the irredentist Roman alphabet) ranges alphabetically from Arabic, Armenian, Batak (Toba) and Bengali through to Tamil, Telugu, Thai and Tibetan. Besides its predictable sections, such as Classical Chinese (Wenli) and Cyrillic/Old Church Slavonic, there are welcome surprises: Berber, Buginese, Cherokee, Coptic, Cree (developed by a Welsh missionary from Brecon), Egyptian, Gothic, Gurmukhi (Panjabi), Javanese, Samaritan, Syriac.

The script tables originally appeared as an appendix to Campbell’s Compendium of the World’s Languages (London and New York, Routledge, 1991). The script table and commentary for Epigraphic South Arabian are...