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For Every Word You Ever Said

There is A Little Book of Language, by David Crystal, that tells a history of words and language, how we learn, distinguish, and develop our very sense of self through what we say and read. Everything from ancient and dying languages to text-messaging is briskly covered in this readable volume. The short and wide-ranging chapters are perfect for story-time, detox reading, and discovering something new on every page.

For instance, did you know?:

• The @ symbol was first used in email by Ray Tomlinson, an American computer engineer, in 1971, when he sent the first e-mail.  We call it the “at sign” in English, but it’s called “malpa” in Poland (the word “monkey), “sobaka” in Russia (“dog”), and “papaka” in Greece (“duckling”).

• Americans are familiar with “textisms” like “l8r” and “lol.”  In other languages, textisms include “mr6” (French, “merci”); “salu2” (Spanish, “saludos”); and “8ung” (German, “achtung”).

• Babies can hear things in the womb before they’re born and recognize their mother’s voice within a few hours of birth.

• There are approximately 6,000 languages in the world.  But they are rapidly dying out in several parts of the world, as fast as one every few weeks.

• A dictionary of about 1,500 pages has about 100,000 words in it.

• Though in many places bilingualism is a political issue, about three-quarters of the human race grows up speaking two or more languages.

To get a better idea, view the Table of Contents or listen to David Crystal’s interview with NPR’s Talk of the Nation.

David Crystal's Little Book of Language on NPR and Newsweek

Yesterday proved to be a big day for David Crystal's popular new work, A Little Book of Language. Crystal spent the afternoon speaking with radio journalist Neal Conan on NPR's Talk of the Nation. Fielding questions from Conan and listeners alike, Crystal discussed at length how languages develop, how they go extinct, and, most importantly, how they can be saved. The entire interview as well as an excerpt from Crystal's book are currently available on Talk of the Nation's website.

Later in the day Crystal's book received more great press in a review by Malcolm Jones on Newsweek's Arts/Culture blog. Jones calls the work "concise, lucid and humorous" and "a pleasure for readers of any age."

Today's Washington Post included a strong review by Michael Dirda of David Crystal's A Little Book of Language:

"Like Gombrich's A Little History of the World, Crystal's A Little Book of Language may be for children (of all ages, as the saying goes), yet it's by no means childish or juvenile. In other words, buy if gor your son or daughter, but read it for yourself"

Alberto Manguel: "Borges and the Impossibility of Writing"

Alberto Manguel delivers the Finzi-Contini Lecture at Yale University, entitled "Borges and the Impossibility of Writing". He is introduced by Maria Menocal, director of the Whitney Humanities Center.

An acclaimed anthologist, translator, essayist, novelist, and editor, Manguel once served as a reader for Jorge Luis Borges and has been hailed by the Times of London as "the Scheherazade of books". Reviewing his latest collection, A Reader on Reading, the New York Review of Books commented, "Essays of this quality are worth reading, or rereading, wherever they are encountered." Manguel's The Library at Night is also now available in paperback through YUP.

Will English remain the world's dominant language?

The Schott's Vocab blog on the New York Times website has posted a fascinating interview with Claude Hagège, author of On the Death and Life of Languages, which YUP recently published in a new English translation.

When asked about languages challenging English's global dominance, Hagège makes two particularly fascinating points about the ways in which languages spread and retain their influence over time:

Hindi (the most spoken language in India) and Mandarin Chinese might replace English as dominant languages some day. But two reasons at least lead one to think that the process could be long:

(i) Hindi is not widespread outside Asia, and there is presently no special effort to promote it worldwide. As for Mandarin Chinese, it is true that a great number of Confucius Institutes are scheduled to be built by China in various countries, but we cannot know today the result of this decision;

(ii) The publications (books, internet, etc.) in English cover all domains of knowledge, let alone the presence of English in all other activities. These traces of the worldwide spread of English will not disappear.

To learn more about languages both dominant and endangered, check out this BBC interview with Hagège, and be sure to look out for David Crystal's Little Book of Language, which publishes this spring.