The last part about language planning might be boring if you're not a linguist or don't share a curiosity for the subject. In Mathematics for a Million (1936) and Science for a Citizen (1938), Hogben offered adult readers detailed and readable texts on difficult subjects. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. This last point really shows the assumptions made but not clarified in the first part, namely that learning a language is about memorizing a list of words and "redundancies" in language must be bad. It's purely academic in that sense, there's no proper explanation on how to actually go about doing that learning.

Sidenote: In linguistic circles people love to dig into exceptions and point out when rules break down, which can make learners abandon something incredibly useful for fear of making mistakes. Their results for Swedish, Danish, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian are displayed in tabular form in the Language Museum which forms Part Four. Taking advantage of the Latin and Teutonic roots would greatly aid learning the Romance and Germanic languages, respectively. The first two-thirds of the book was an incredibly in-depth analysis of the syntax of Romance and Germanic languages, especially as they apply to English. I recommend it heartily, but with the caveat that one might get more out of it with some time spent with more recent linguistics before diving in.It uses written Chinese as a language to use as a grammar syntax benchmark, and takes a shallow look into other languages like Persian, Bantu, Arabic, and others — including some Slavic. 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. O livro foi publicado no Brasil, nos anos 60, com o título de O homem e as línguas: guia para o estudioso de idiomas, traduzido e adaptado pelo filólogo brasileiro Aires da Mata Machado Filho, em conjunto com Paulo Rónai e Marcello Marques Magalhães. Finally, he provides a vocabulary of 500 words for the major Romance languages and for the major Germanic languages.

Boards have moderate shelf wear with mild bumping and fraying to corners and crushing and fraying to spine ends. While speaking English might be a disincentive to learn other languages, it can also be a great base to learn from due to its hybrid Germanic/Romantic vocabulary. A primeira trata da história natural da linguagem e traz um panorama da história do alfabeto, do uso das flexões e como elas vão decaindo conforme a língua evolui, da sintaxe e da classificação das línguas. Given that I would never say "I wash" but instead, "I'm washing myself", I lost trust in a lot of what the book said about the "advanced evolution of Anglo-American".Part II covers the "hybrid heritage" of English as a language which straddles the Germanic and Romance branches of the Indo-European language tree.

You want a closer, albeit time-consuming, look at the languages surrounding you (and they'll always be "Euro-centric" wherever you live)? A terceira parte comenta os projetos de línguas artificiais e a última traz lista de palavras para estudo. It is based on the increasingly international terminology of science and operated with what may be a too economical syntax.A synthetic international language must wait for adoption upon political and educational conditions which are not yet in sight.

For example, in "I eat" "He eats", the "-s" is an unnecessary flexion in the author's eyes (I don't disagree with that). I come back to this book year after year to read new chapters and refresh myself on those I've already read. 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.

Its designing is a worthy task for the collaboration of the best minds, but meanwhile what can we do to ease the linguistic strains the next fifty years will put upon the world? This is addressed to those who, when studying a foreign language, wish to have as wide and clear ideas as possible of what they are doing. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Well suited for older people and laymen who are interested in languages and linguistics, but certainly not very technical or scientific.