The Loom Of Language

But this book is more than a guide to foreign languages; it goes deep into the roots of all knowledge as it explores the history of speech. It lights up the dim pathways of prehistory and unfolds the story of the slow growth of human expression from the most primitive signs and sounds to the elaborate variations of the highest cultures. Without language no knowledge would be possible; here we see how language is at once the source and the reservoir of all we know.

The Loom of Language

A book about languages, how to learn them and how they are related. The author has an extensive knowledge of germanic languages (english, german, danish, dutch, swedish, norwegian) and the latin family (latin, french, italian, spanish, portuguese) and explains you how they are related and how the learner can take advantage of it. If only we had more books that still dare to explain complex things in simple words ! As an example of the style of the book, here's a paragraph where he explains the reason why people have such a hard time learning languages in schools, namely, why "generally, the adult has more to show after a three month's course at a commercial institute than an adolescent after three years' study of a foreign language in a British Secondary or American high school" :

Whereas, it has been a tradition ever since 1981 to sear Prime Ministers in with their hand on a copy of The Loom of Language (a book from the 1940s about languages, which ignited King Robert's fanaticism for language and also his xenophilia which gve use Talossa), teh Cosâ hereby enshrines this ritualistic act in the Constituziun by adding the following text to Article 47:The Oath of Office shall be administered with the Prime Minister resting his left hand on a copy of The Loom of Language (unless this is absolutely and utterly impractical) and raising his right hand as if he were getting a passport or testifying in court.

TO anyone who learnt languages in the traditional fashion, Dr. Bodmer's work must bring a feeling of frustration. In the time spent at the average school on memorizing one language, the intelligent student could, by the method here displayed, learn to understand a group of related languages.

It is at the same time a history of language, a guide to foreign tongues, and a method for learning them. It shows, through basic vocabularies, family resemblances of languages--Teutonic, Romance, Greek--helpful tricks of translation, key combinations of roots and phonetic patterns. It presents by common-sense methods the most helpful approach to the mastery of many languages; it condenses vocabulary to a minimum of essential words; it simplifies grammar in an entirely new way; and it teaches a languages as it is actually used in everyday life.But this book is more than a guide to foreign languages; it goes deep into the roots of all knowledge as it explores the history of speech. It lights up the dim pathways of prehistory and unfolds the story of the slow growth of human expression from the most primitive signs and sounds to the elaborate variations of the highest cultures. Without language no knowledge would be possible; here we see how language is at once the source and the reservoir of all we know.

A book about languages, how to learn them and how they are related. The author has an extensive knowledge of germanic languages (english, german, danish, dutch, swedish, norwegian) and the latin family (latin, french, italian, spanish, portuguese) and explains you how they are related and how the learner can take advantage of it. If only we had more books that still dare to explain complex things in simple words !

As an example of the style of the book, here's a paragraph where he explains the reason why people have such a hard time learning languages in schools, namely, why "generally, the adult has more to show after a three month's course at a commercial institute than an adolescent after three years' study of a foreign language in a British Secondary or American high school" :

"The greatest impediment, common to most branches of school and university education, is the dead hand of Plato. We have not yet got away from education designed for the sons of gentlemen. Educational Platonism sacrifices realizable proficiency by encouraging the pursuit of unattainable perfection. The child of the immigrant learns a language by blundering his or her way into greater self-confidence

This book about European languages written in 1942 by Frederick Bodmer is sadly hard to get nowadays. Bodmer had Chomsky's job in MIT before he retired. Which in the linguistics world is a bit like being the opening act for Jesus.The book was written with the encouragement of and edited by his friend Lancelot Hogben. Hogben had a vaguely Victorian project, entitled optimistically "The Age of Plenty", to write good books in a few different areas so that people could educate themselves.Mathematics for the Million (1936) and Science for the Citizen (1938) were the first two and "History for the Homeland" the fourth. Hogben seems to have been quite a Victorian kind of guy with a certain smoking jacket coolHogben was mocked by Orwell for his staid writing style. But if you judge a man by the quality of his detractors Orwell is a great one to have. To Hogben's eternal credit he fought against the cloven hoof of eugenics at a time when it was horribly popular.The loom of langauge is like a secret handshake among language nerds. When you start talking to someone else who has read it a few hours later you escape the conversational black hole where you've been ignoring everyone else. I can't keep a copy as I keep giving mine to people. The loom of langauge 'has always been my favorite book about learning languages' is just one example of the gushing reviews the book gets on language blogs.'It is the only book that actually teaches languages instead of simply teaching how to learn languages.' The first section is a history of human language and alphabets. Next is a morphology and syntax of several languages and then a classification of languages throughout the world. The second section is mainly about how to learn vocabulary lists by taking advantage of similarities among languages particularly regular sound shifts from one language to another.It is an old fashioned book in the sense it deals with European languages and pretty much ignores the fascinating languages of the rest of the world. But what it does do is lay out through history and logic where German and Latin languages come from. How they work and how they morphed and combined into English.Mathematics for the million was really influential in the past. For example there is a great post here about how the book inspired him in his career. However nowdays the book seems not to be popular in the same way as the loom of language is. Still the mathematics book in 'the age of plenty' series is a classic and it should be available to more people.This book was published during the second world war with the express intention that language learning could bring people together. The general principle of the age of plenty series was that we could and would learn if we just had access to the knowledge. I still think that is trueand with smartphones, Gutenberg, librivox and other cool projects this really could happen. Hogben and Bodmer went to an huge effort to write this book and found 700+ pages during wartime rationing to try get us to talk to each other.Maybe now 70 years after this book was written we can achieve its aim far easier than the authors imagined. If the book was released into the public domain everyone with a smartphone or computer could read it. Which is an audience of billions and much more than the million the mathematics book was written for or the '1,800 million people on this globe' when Loom was written. With smartphones we can achieve Bodmer's books aim easier than he could have imagined.Posted byIamreddaveat3:07 PMEmail ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest1 comment:Anonymoussaid...

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that one budget cut up for approval this week is a 40% cut to certain foreign language and international studies programs at universities. Many of these programs, initiated under Title VI of the Higher Education Act and the Fulbright-Hays Act, were designed to foster the study of strategic foreign languages to aid national security during the Cold War and shortly after 9/11.

I once used to work for a Title VI center and am familiar with many others. In my opinion, much of this money is wasted on frivolous research and activities--including ones in which I was involved. I am a huge supporter of language education in this country, especially the less-commonly taught languages (LCTLs, in the trade). But there are better, more efficient ways to encourage language learning--especially to support our national security interests--than to give it to a bunch of academics. The money would be better spent giving direct incentives to students to study the languages in one or two dedicated facilities (like Monterrey or Middlebury), and then tying the education to national security purposes. I met way too many people who spoke LCTLs who were researching things that had nothing to do with national security or building language capacity for the public (as opposed to private) good.

We must preserve foreign language study, both for national security and the personal enrichment it brings to those who learn. A bad system that wastes taxpayer dollars, however, is unhelpful. Higher education should take this opportunity to look for ways to improve its language-teaching effectiveness.

Through the repetitive processes in weaving I have found a place of meditation. Each peaceful interaction with the yarn has led into exploration of the ego and the self through language. My research has guided me to the manifestation of thought, that, the use of language in our relationship with the self creates patterns of being in reality. In my work, I explore the relationship of language and pattern through the use of color and structure. 041b061a72