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Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese

Insup Taylor & M. Martin Taylor 2014

E-Book: 200 English pages

Publisher: John Benjamins

Price: FREE

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The book describes how the three East Asian writing systems-Chinese, Korean, and Japanese- originated, developed, and are used today. Uniquely, this book: (1) examines the three East Asian scripts (and English) together in relation to each other, and (2) discusses how these scripts are, and historically have been, used in literacy and how they are learned, written, read, and processed by the eyes, the brain, and the mind.
In this second edition, the authors have included recent research findings on the uses of the scripts, added several new sections, and rewritten several other sections. They have also added a new Part IV to deal with issues that similarly involve all the four languages/scripts of their interest.
The book is intended both for the general public and for interested scholars. Technical terms (listed in a glossary) are used only when absolutely necessary.

Quotes

“[The book] provides an excellent account of writing and literacy in three national languages of East Asia …. It is strongly recommended not only to those working on writing and literacy, but to broad typologists and cognitive linguists.”
— Toshio Ohori, University of Tokyo, in Studies in Language, vol. 25, No 1, 2001, pp 173-177. On the first edition.
“Overall, this is a valuable book […]. For the reader who is not a specialist in East Asian languages, it provides a great deal of information about writing and literacy that would otherwise be hard to find in one place. Due to its broad scope, even specialists are likely to find new information on some topics.”
— William J. Poser, University of Pennsylvania, in Anthropological Linguistics, vol 44, No 1, 2002. pp 103-106. On the first edition.
“The first edition of the book covered a wide-range of topics in writing and literacy in the three East Asian languages, in relation to each other and to English. The second edition is thoroughly updated, especially in reading research. I heartily recommend it to both academic communities and the general public.”
— Cho Jeung Ryeul, Kyungnam University, South Korea