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

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The author's treatise on the development of various Western languages from their Latin and Teutonic roots, however, was engaging. The hope that a world-wide auxiliary language, such as Esperanto, would be adopted internationally had not yet been utterly dashed by the two World Wars. You will not approach the mastery of any languages with this book, nor have the tools to create a plan to, either. Bodmer’s method is based on recognition and input of useful vocabulary first, and later intensive reading and writing to perfect the grammar, which seems to be the opposite of certain books.

Boards have heavy edge-wear with substantial bumping to corners, crushing to spine ends and rub wear all over. For example, in "I eat" "He eats", the "-s" is an unnecessary flexion in the author's eyes (I don't disagree with that). Part II covers the “hybrid heritage” of English as a language which straddles the Germanic and Romance branches of the Indo-European language tree.It's probably worth a read for the aspiring polyglots who want to learn a bunch of Romance and Germanic languages, although there are probably more modern and practical books out there for that purpose (like the Seven Sieves for Romance, although I've not read that so can't vouch for it). It shows, through basic vocabularies, family resemblances of languages--Teutonic, Romance, Greek--helpful tricks of translation, key combinations of roots and phonetic patterns. Here is an informative introduction to language: its origins in the past, its growth through history, and its present use for communication between peoples. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. The last part about language planning might be boring if you're not a linguist or don't share a curiosity for the subject.

so im adding this idc🥴) ive read MOST pages tho and the sections I was really interested in (ie its part 2 and the part 4 when needed) besides some ppl even treat this book like dictionary and not to be read from page to page.

With the growth of the “polyglot” trend online, resources that purport to teach you how to learn languages quickly are increasingly common. It's purely academic in that sense, there's no proper explanation on how to actually go about doing that learning. I am suprised more people on this forum have not read this book considering the high-level of interest in both Germanic and Romance languages. It’s exhilarating to read, even today, seven decades later, the thoughts of a brilliant mind on the necessity and joy of learning language, and how this goal can best be achieved. The science and history books are long out of print, but the mathematics book, Mathematics for the Million, remains available.

Anyways it's not the kind of book I can't read cover to cover but even a partial reading gives you a much better and more holistic sense of how language works.The binding suffers moderate to severe loosening due to age and wear, but remains secure and in-tact; the pages are clean and unmarked.

When you have done this, it is important to have a small vocabulary of essential nouns, adjectives, and verbs ready for use. One final note- the final section of the book has extensive word lists for the previously mentioned groups, as well as Greek roots used in scientific terminology. Interestingly, WWII and the Balkan wars in the 90’s were what encouraged me to start learning languages in the first place.

With a little more work and practice I would think it would be possible but time consuming and a lot of time I probably do not have.