Speaking Out

Frederick Bodmer's "The Loom of Language" was first published by Allen & Unwin in 1944. The copy I have is a reprint of the first paperback edition, dated 1996. When I was a young teenager I borrowed this book so often from our local library that I began to feel it was mine; then someone else borrowed it and never returned it. Luckily I found one later in a local bookshop. It has never lost its charms for me. For anyone interested in languages, it is an amazing book. It tells the story of languages from earliest times, and traces how the different ones we have today developed. It discusses language learning, the origins of script and writing systems, artificial languages, everything to do with languages. Here you will find tables translating English into all the common Germanic languages, and separate ones translating English into the more common Romance languages. It is a book to take up again and again. If such a book had been written and handed down from the times of Linear A and Linear B there would be a lot of happy scholars now.

The Dictionary of Languages by Andrew Dalby, which describes itself as "The Definitive Reference To More Than 400 Languages" is another fascinating book. I bought it from Amazon, havng come across a review of it by chance. My copy is a paperback published by A &C Black of London in 2006. It details 400 different languages, giving maps of where they are to be found, their origins and relationships with other languages living or dead, and the number of speakers using them as a first language. As you read you realise what treasures our spoken tongues are, how they enunciate emotions and feelings and ideas, how important it is not to let these go, how they are as important a part of our heritage as any artefacts in museums. The Irish Times today had a small piece on a session at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting which is underway in Vancouver. At the meeting it was said that the technology of the internet and the social media which use it will be the saviour of dying languages. The importance of all languages was stressed. The Times reported that 'The loss of languages spoken by only a few hundred people may not seem an issue when there are plenty more languages to replace them. Yet languages are a unique repository not just of words but also of cultural identity, linguists stressed'......"Languages become a repository of information on plant and animal species, cultural practices, traditional medicine and much more," said Prof David Harrison of Swarthmore college in Pennsylvania. "Through the digital technologies these languages can talk to the world." he said. And I have to say I think that sounds right to me. Owning and reading language books is a personal experience, but sharing this experience with a large number of other people has only been made possible since the arrival of the internet.

"Contemporary Linguistics – An Introduction" by William O'Grady, Michael Dobrovolsky and Francis Katamba, published by Longman, London & New York in 1996, was a college book from about fourteen years ago. It is one of those hefty books I discussed in an earlier instalment of my blog, having been revised and upgraded a number of times, so that shelves and shelves of the earlier volumes teeter in corners of student bookshops. I read recently that a university bookshop in Dublin had thrown out mountains of this type of textlbook because they couldn't sell them. A terrible waste, and definitely a pointer that the looseleaf type of textbook or some other similar system should be produced, where pages with revisions could be easily inserted, and also, the portions of the book required for certain classes could easily be carried in to college as needed and later returned to their place in the book. In this way a textbook would remain relevant for the duration of a particular course, the purchase of the revised pages being easily and cheaply accomplished when necessary, and the whole could be of value as a secondhand book when an individual student has finished with it. No doubt this would affect greatly the sales of college textbook publishers, who are not in the business for purely altruistic reasons, but when the sheer waste involved in producing these updated textbooks year after year is considered, these days there should be no contest, in my opinion. We just cannot live any longer with the squandering of resources which took place in the so-called boom years. They were really the bust years in the true sense, though we were pitifully unaware of it.

In a sale I found a volume entitled "Webster's Third New International Dictionary and Seven Language Dictionary" which appears to be part of a set published by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, in 1981.. The section on languages, entitled "The Britannica World Language Dictionary" gives the grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and useful phrases for French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Yiddish. English, the source language, is apparently counted in the seven. The grammar section for each language is short but comprehensive. The best thing about this book is that it includes Yiddish, which I have never come across before in any language book. According to the text "..this is the first time Yiddish words have appeared in dictionary form in Roman characters so that they are understandable to all who read English." There are probably quite a few of these old dictionary parts to be found in sales if you're lucky.

For anybody interested in languages I would like to mention www.freerice.com, which is a website run by the United Nations World Food Program. . When you go on you will find yourself on a page giving English words and asking you to give the correct meaning. Questions to which wrong answers are given are given again, until a right answer is obtained. Every time you get an answer right some rice is donated to poor countries. The donors are the advertisers on the site, it is all explained under 'Rice' on the top menu. On the top right of the box where you find the questions, you can click and find a menu of subjects, including mathematics, art history, from tomorrow Anatomy and most importantly from my point of view, there are vocabulary tests for German, French, Italian and Spanish. I would have been more pleased if there were a section for Russian and Chinese vocabulary, the latter in Pinyin for those of us who have not got around to mastering Chinese characters. It is easy to spend hours on this website, but you won't feel you are wasting time because you are testing your knowledge of languages and at the same time donating rice.

Another website is How To Learn Any Language:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/mezzofanti/biography/index.html and on the page to which this link leads on that site, you will find the fascinating story of one Cardinal Joseph Caspar Mezzofanti, born 17^th September, 1774 at Bologna, who was renowned for his vast knowledge of languages. One thing he and I have in common is that apparently he was not a great traveller, which often puzzles people who seem to think that if you are interested in languages you are of necessity interested in visiting foreign lands. As far as I am concerned this is definitely not the case. Of course in his day they didn't have aeroplanes, however, from my point of view air travel is just one more reason to remain at home.

An Irish site which has a very good section for those interested in learning languages is www.boards.ie, The page link is http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=217 .

There is no shortage of websites for language lovers, but those are my particular favourites. Perhaps if you have a personal favourite, you would be kind enough to put a link to it in the comment box on this blog so we can all try it out.

I have been collecting language books for many years. Some have more merits than others, for instance, there are books which are better at explaining grammar, or at providing the learner with colloquial phrases, and some systems are more suitable for certain types of learner than others, but they all have something of value to offer, and are worth holding on to and passing on to posterity.