Visible Speech is an attempt to set the record straight about the nature of writing John DeFrancis a noted specialist in the Chinese language shows that writing can be based only upon a sound system and not upon any other linguistic level He corrects the erroneous views of Chinese writing as pictographic ideographic logographic or morphemic and defends his conclusion that because of these misrepresentations the nature of all writing continues to be misunderstood Using the writing systems of Sumerian Egyptian Arabic Japanese Korean Greek Mayan and English among others to illustrate his points Dr DeFrancis stresses their basic identity as representatives of visible speech while noting their secondary differences as manifested in their diverse script forms He proposes a new classification of writing systems based on this theme of diversity and oneness and makes an impassioned case for the essential phonetic component of all writing This book reflects the author s sound scholarship and novel insights which place it in the forefront with such classics on writing as those by Gelb Diringer Cohen Fevrier and Jensen The readable style aims at a general audience interested in understanding the nature of the symbols that first strike the eye while the academic research involved makes it an indispensable work for scholars in the many fields related to language and linguistics