How Languages Saved Me
Title | How Languages Saved Me PDF eBook |
Author | Tadeusz Haska |
Publisher | |
Pages | 146 |
Release | 2019-09-24 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 9781633939233 |
"When I was arrested my whole world crumbled. I knew that leaders of political parties had been arrested, and never heard from again. My only chance at survival was to find a way to escape from the jail." Orphaned in Poland at the age of thirteen, Tadeusz "Tad" Haska survived World War II on the run, narrowly evading the Nazis every step of the way. After the war, he daringly escaped jail by the Soviet Secret Police, fled to Sweden and launched an elaborate plan to smuggle his wife in a coffin on an all-male naval ship. Discover how Tad's knowledge of nine languages helped him survive in the face of unspeakable adversity.
Polyglot: How I Learn Languages
Title | Polyglot: How I Learn Languages PDF eBook |
Author | Kat— Lomb |
Publisher | Lulu.com |
Pages | 220 |
Release | 2008-01-01 |
Genre | Education |
ISBN | 1606437062 |
KAT LOMB (1909-2003) was one of the great polyglots of the 20th century. A translator and one of the first simultaneous interpreters in the world, Lomb worked in 16 languages for state and business concerns in her native Hungary. She achieved further fame by writing books on languages, interpreting, and polyglots. Polyglot: How I Learn Languages, first published in 1970, is a collection of anecdotes and reflections on language learning. Because Dr. Lomb learned her languages as an adult, after getting a PhD in chemistry, the methods she used will be of particular interest to adult learners who want to master a foreign language.
The Last Speakers
Title | The Last Speakers PDF eBook |
Author | K. David Harrison |
Publisher | National Geographic Books |
Pages | 316 |
Release | 2010-09-21 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1426206682 |
Part travelogue and part scientist's notebook, The Last Speakers is the poignant chronicle of author K. David Harrison's expeditions around the world to meet with last speakers of vanishing languages. The speakers' eloquent reflections and candid photographs reveal little-known lifeways as well as revitalization efforts to teach disappearing languages to younger generations. Thought-provoking and engaging, this unique book illuminates the global language-extinction crisis through photos, graphics, interviews, traditional wisdom never before translated into English, and first-person essays that thrillingly convey the adventure of science and exploration.
How Languages Changed My Life
Title | How Languages Changed My Life PDF eBook |
Author | Project MEITS |
Publisher | Archway Publishing |
Pages | 174 |
Release | 2019-12-12 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 1480884588 |
How Languages Changed My Life is a collection of stories exploring the importance of languages in shaping the lives of individuals and communities around the world. It brings together writers and musicians, politicians and activists, teachers, students, scientists, comedians, and sportspeople whose experiences are both unique and exemplary. The first-person voices are conversational, intimate and uplifting, but also often very funny and deeply moving. This book is for anyone who loves real-life stories; is interested in languages, culture, and adventure; and believes in global citizenship. It embraces more than forty different languages and offers a kaleidoscope of individual views that collectively make the case for linguistic diversity being as essential to our survival as biodiversity. Irrespective of age and background, whether as first-time learners or professional polyglots, all our storytellers testify to how languages have inspired and empowered them. How Languages Changed My Life is a book for our times, reminding us that what we have in common is always greater than our differences.
The Loom of Language
Title | The Loom of Language PDF eBook |
Author | Frederick Bodmer |
Publisher | W. W. Norton & Company |
Pages | 724 |
Release | 1985 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 9780393300345 |
Here is an informative introduction to language: its origins in the past, its growth through history, and its present use for communication between peoples. 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 language as it is actually used in everyday life.
How Languages Work
Title | How Languages Work PDF eBook |
Author | Carol Genetti |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 677 |
Release | 2014-01-23 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 1107782570 |
A new and exciting introduction to linguistics, this textbook presents language in all its amazing complexity, while guiding students gently through the basics. Students emerge with an appreciation of the diversity of the world's languages, as well as a deeper understanding of the structure of human language, the ways it is used, and its broader social and cultural context. Chapters introducing the nuts and bolts of language study (phonology, syntax, meaning) are combined with those on the 'functions' of language (discourse, prosody, pragmatics, and language contact), helping students gain a better grasp of how language works in the real world. A rich set of language 'profiles' help students explore the world's linguistic diversity, identify similarities and differences between languages, and encourages them to apply concepts from earlier chapter material. A range of carefully designed pedagogical features encourage student engagement, adopting a step-by-step approach and using study questions and case studies.
The Search for the Perfect Language
Title | The Search for the Perfect Language PDF eBook |
Author | Umberto Eco |
Publisher | John Wiley & Sons |
Pages | 406 |
Release | 1997-04-08 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0631205101 |
The idea that there once existed a language which perfectly and unambiguously expressed the essence of all possible things and concepts has occupied the minds of philosophers, theologians, mystics and others for at least two millennia. This is an investigation into the history of that idea and of its profound influence on European thought, culture and history. From the early Dark Ages to the Renaissance it was widely believed that the language spoken in the Garden of Eden was just such a language, and that all current languages were its decadent descendants from the catastrophe of the Fall and at Babel. The recovery of that language would, for theologians, express the nature of divinity, for cabbalists allow access to hidden knowledge and power, and for philosophers reveal the nature of truth. Versions of these ideas remained current in the Enlightenment, and have recently received fresh impetus in attempts to create a natural language for artificial intelligence. The story that Umberto Eco tells ranges widely from the writings of Augustine, Dante, Descartes and Rousseau, arcane treatises on cabbalism and magic, to the history of the study of language and its origins. He demonstrates the initimate relation between language and identity and describes, for example, how and why the Irish, English, Germans and Swedes - one of whom presented God talking in Swedish to Adam, who replied in Danish, while the serpent tempted Eve in French - have variously claimed their language as closest to the original. He also shows how the late eighteenth-century discovery of a proto-language (Indo-European) for the Aryan peoples was perverted to support notions of racial superiority. To this subtle exposition of a history of extraordinary complexity, Umberto Eco links the associated history of the manner in which the sounds of language and concepts have been written and symbolized. Lucidly and wittily written, the book is, in sum, a tour de force of scholarly detection and cultural interpretation, providing a series of original perspectives on two thousand years of European History. The paperback edition of this book is not available through Blackwell outside of North America.