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Understanding McLuhan
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Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
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08390_Field_TCGG T155.txt
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1996-04-10
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820b
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16 lines
create the mental sound movie which we call reading.
The most definitive work we have on the phonetic letters
is The Alphabet by David Diringer. He begins his story as follows
(p. 37):
The alphabet is the last, the most highly developed,
the most convenient and the most easily adaptable
system of writing. Alphabetic writing is now universally
employed by civilized peoples; its use is acquired in
childhood with ease. There is an enormous advantage,
obviously, in the use of letters which represent single
sounds rather than ideas or syllables; no sinologist knows
all the 80,000 or so Chinese symbols, but it is also far
from easy to master the 9,000 or so symbols actually
employed by Chinese scholars. How far simpler is it to use