The Loom of Language: An Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages

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Here is an informative introduction to language: its origins in the past, its growth through history, and its present use for communication between peoples.

This book is a product of its time. The author was multilingual but not a linguist. The book was written right after WWII. The author's purpose was to aid people to be able to communicate with each other so that understanding between people would contribute to the prevention of future wars. Other similar books teach you to learn any language, including those outside the Indo-European language family that share literally nothing with your native tongue, English. The Loom of Language starts with multiple chapters about linguistics. (contra Benny the Polyglot, Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World who counsels speaking on Day 1, and Kaufmann, The Way of the Linguist: A Language Learning Odyssey who would have me reading text with native speaker audio on Day 1). Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of the infringing activity and that is to be removed It also includes how a man can communicate across continents and down the ages through the impersonal and permanent record which we call writing. It is interesting book. I read it a number of years ago. It quite long and dated as some have already mentioned. However, it does give a nice survey of the two language families, has the compartive word lists, and also has it own way of approching a new language. Basically, focusing first on "function" words and then branching out from there.As I said above, Part II is a treasure trove. Bodmer distills everything a student needs to know about sound correspondences, etc. to make connections across the outlined languages and accelerate learning. The only annoyance is that the huge tables in Part IV aren’t available online somewhere as spreadsheets (the book is almost a century old after all) so one could import them into a spaced repetition system like Anki for efficient learning. I typed these out as Google spreadsheets for my own use. I’ve made them available here: Romance Word List, Germanic Word List, and the Greek Roots List from the language museum. Importing into Anki or suchlike is pretty easy.

Of itself, no such change can bring the age-long calamity of war to an end; and it is a dangerous error to conceive that it can do so. We cannot hope to reach a remedy for the language obstacles to international co-operation on a democratic footing, while predatory finance capital, intrigues or armament manufacturers, and the vested interest of a rentier class in the misery of colonial peoples continue to stifle the impulse to a world-wide enterprise for the common wealth of mankind. No language reform can abolish war, while social agencies far more powerful than mere linguistic misunderstandings furnish fresh occasion for it. What intelligent language planning can do is to forge a new instrument for human collaboration on a planetary scale, when social institutions propitious to international strife no longer thwart the constructive task of planning health, leisure and plenty for all.” YtownPolyglot Orange Belt Posts: 227 Joined: Thu Apr 14, 2016 9:42 pm Location: Ohio, USA Languages: English (N), French (C1), Spanish (B2), German (B2), Italian (B1)I read the first three chapters of the book. Published during World War II (1943), this book is slightly dated. The author's treatise on the development of various Western languages from their Latin and Teutonic roots, however, was engaging. Taking advantage of the Latin and Teutonic roots would greatly aid learning the Romance and Germanic languages, respectively. Also, I had never read a book that dealt with the history of the alphabet in this much detail. He wrote his PhD thesis in 1924 at University of Zurich on the topic Studies about a dialogue in Nathan by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing ( Studien zum Dialog in Lessings Nathan). After that he taught in Europe and at University of Cape Town. Later he held a position within the Department of Modern Languages at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was succeeded in his position at MIT by Noam Chomsky in 1955. [1] Bibliography [ edit ] BLEND Helps Payoneer Reduce KYC Verification Times with Localization Services in 50 Languages Matt Strach When an accented é precedes t, p, or c at the beginning of a modern French word it often takes the place of the Latin s in English words of Romance origin. Thus état (state), étranger (stranger, foreigner), étoffe (stuff), éponge (sponge), épouse (spouse, wife), épicier (grocer—man who sells spices), and école (school) come to life if we know this. It is often easy to guess the meaning of written words in one of them if we know the meaning of corresponding words in the other. Indeed we can go far beyond guesswork.

AlexTG Green Belt Posts: 299 Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:14 pm Location: Tasmania, Australia Languages: Easy to Read: English(N), French, Spanish The Library Genesis aggregator is a community aiming at collecting and cataloging items descriptions for the most part of scientific,The book was edited by Bodmer’s friend Lancelot Hogben, a zoologist turned popular science writer and inventor of the auxiliary language Interglossa, and was part of a series of books entitled Primers for the Age of Plenty that also included volumes on mathematics, general science, and history. The science and history books are long out of print, but the mathematics book, Mathematics for the Million, remains available. (I, of course, own a copy and will review it eventually…)

In less than a thousand years what was a local dialect may become the official speech of a nation that cannot communicate with its neighbors without the help of an interpreter or translator. Lusty's Lloyd Loom. With Englis, German and French Language Tetxt. a History of 1930s Design & collectors' Price Guise There is so much great information in here that it requires repeat readings over several years, especially Part II. (I'm on my first pass.) Consider this book a meta-manual for learning how to learn languages. Interestingly, WWII and the Balkan wars in the 90’s were what encouraged me to start learning languages in the first place. I wanted to read the original documents and journals and newspapers and try to understand why wars happen and where the hatred for other human beings comes from. There are still several armed conflicts happening all over the world, and the racist propaganda against immigrants in several countries, including both my home and adopted countries, is what keeps me learning languages – so that one day I can help those immigrants, and especially refugees, adjust to their new lives and fight against the discrimination. Perhaps I am a bleeding-heart liberal when it comes to the underprivileged (especially the poor who are usually immigrants) but rampant inequality among groups of people is heart-breaking to me; and even though it sounds trite and clichéd, I still believe that learning foreign languages plays a large part in making the world a better place. There is so much great information in here that it requires repeat readings over several years, especially Part II. Consider this book a meta-manual for learning how to learn languages.

The book contains essays about the Latin and Greek origins of European words. He discusses Romance and Germanic languages. He describes trends in the syntax and semantics of the language families. Bodmer also knew seventy years ago that children do not learn new languages any more easily than adults, but this also remains a popular misconception. I personally think this idea prevails because it lends an obscure layer of magic to the act of learning a language – the idea of a preternatural skill only the very young possess, perhaps because they are closer to their origins or something equally silly. This excuses adults who have failed to learn, and more importantly excuses the techniques that have failed to teach them! Joy and Wonder 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. Can't remember the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth garyb Brown Belt Posts: 1494 Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 12:35 pm Location: Scotland Languages: Native: English