Written with the non-specialist in mind, this third edition of Kenneth Katzner's best-selling guide's attractive style and layout, delightful original passages and exotic scripts will continue to fascinate all language scholars and linguists. This new edition has been thoroughly revised to include more languages, more countries and current data on populations.
This indispensable resource contains information on nearly 600 languages-individual descriptions of 200 languages with sample passages and English translations; concise notes on where each language is spoken and its history, alphabet and pronunciation; coverage of every country in the world and its main language and speaker numbers; English borrowings from other languages; an introduction to language families. This will be your passport to the speech of the world.
The theory of formal languages is widely accepted as the backbone of theoretical computer science. It mainly originated from mathematics (combinatorics, algebra, mathematical logic) and generative linguistics. All human problem solving capabilities can be considered in a certain sense as a manipulation of symbols and structures composed by symbols, which is actually the stem of formal language theory. Language – in its two basic forms, natural and artificial – is a particular case of a symbol system.
Edited by: Fruchtzwerg - 24 October 2008
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A conventional wisdom among creolists is that creole is a sociohistorical term only: that creole languages share a particular history entailing adults rapidly acquiring a language usually under conditions of subordination, but that structurally they are indistinguishable from other languages. The articles by John H. McWhorter collected in this volume demonstrate that this is in fact untrue.
Despite the spread of multilingualism, the number of research studies in multilingual contexts is scarce. This book deals with this question by examining would-be teachers' language use and attitudes, as their influence on future generations can be enormous. The use of the same questionnaire and the same methodology allows the reader to compare the results obtained in different European bilingual contexts, where the presence of diverse foreign languages leads to a situation in which several languages are in contact.
The necessity to learn multiple languages to function in one's society is, in fact, nearly universal, and Edwards presents the polemic that ensues. The book is written in a very accessible tone and assumes little formal knowledge of linguistics.
Edwards begins by explaining the gradual change of a single language into a whole family of multually unintelligible tongues, the process that gives us multiple languages. He then explains how bilingualism works, how one learns a second language whether as a child or as an adult learner. Code-switching, borrowing, and interference are some important themes here.
The meat of the book is how multiple languages interact not just in the brain of the individual, but among the greater society. Language spread and, closely related, language decline is depressingly reported, while the difficulties of language revival are presented. For Edwards, multilingualism is not just the co-existence of multiple languages within a given society, but even the presence of multiple forms of speech. Very fascinating is his description of prescriptivism, which in seeking to uphold "pure" language asserts that other variants are necessarily impure. And even within a single-language group, men may speak strikingly different than women, as among the Gros Ventre of Montana where men say "jatsa" for bread while women say "kjatsa".
