The Loom of Language

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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.

The first part of the book starts with the history of human language and alphabets and leads into morphology and syntax of several languages, and ends with the classification of languages throughout the world. The second part focuses on learning vocabulary (from the given lists) taking advantage of similarities among languages and sound shifts that cause predictable changes from one language to another. What I always found most important, however, was the assertion that you should learn certain words first, such as personal pronouns, auxiliary verbs, demonstratives, prepositions, conjunctions, etc. (essentially function words) because they are the most common and least recognizable when they change cases. People still tell me they cannot possibly learn a language because they took classes in school and failed to become fluent (although they usually also admit they passedthe classes, which should be evidence enough that something is wrong). Bodmer knew what was wrong seven decades ago, noting the drudgery of the so-called ‘direct method’ of language instruction, which bans the use of the native language. There is zero evidence that this approach works, while there isevidence that it actually inhibits learning. Yet here we are, still following the same approach. Why learn linguistics? We learn how older languages like Old English forked into German and English, and that there are a few common changes to know. e.g. in Wasser and “water”, W in Old English has not changed over time and remains the same in English. In German it sounds like V. The Old English word wæter had a hard T consonant that survived to English, but evolved to “ss” and softened in German. The point of learning this is that there are a handful of these changes you can learn and then you will automatically know hundreds of words without effort. A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge 6 Volume Set 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. But you should not be discouraged by ivory-tower elitism. You are going to make mistakes and fall into traps no matter what, so don’t get discouraged by exceptions.The book explains why these shifts happen, why French and English have hundreds of common words like this, and how to learn them without any mental strain. 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. One difference between speech and writing is important to anyone who is trying to learn a foreign language, especially if it is closely related to a language already familiar. What I also love about Bodmer’s work is the sense of joy he tries to convey, the idea that languages are a wonderful puzzle worth solving. When I first read the book many years ago I was inspired by it, driven to master languages the way Bodmer suggested, and I still use many of the ideas in the book as a guide towards my own continuing education in languages and cultures of the world. 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 first half of the 20 th century was a heady time for language learning and study. The field of philology (now commonly called historical linguistics) was at its zenith. Much of the evolution of the Proto-Indo European language family had been worked out. 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.

It is divided into four parts. Part I is a “natural history” of language. Part II covers the “hybrid heritage” of English as a language which straddles the Germanic and Romance branches of the Indo-European language tree. Part III covers language problems and planning movements. Part IV is a “language museum” of comparative vocabulary tables. There are examples like "I wash" (which means I'm bathing myself in that era) which are used to show how "English has evolved so much further than other European languages" by even being able to remove personal pronouns via the use of context. 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". If you dream of learning more than one language from the following list, read/skim this book and use the tips. It will save you time and effort overall. The list: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, plus the languages in the above quote. The ideas will also work for languages like Catalan and Romanian, but you will have to find the relative shifts somewhere else, which won't be hard to do once you understand how they usually work.

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…) 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 divided into four parts. Part I is a "natural history" of language. Part II covers the "hybrid heritage" of English as a language which straddles the Germanic and Romance branches of the Indo-European language tree. Part III covers language problems and planning movements. Part IV is a "language museum" of comparative vocabulary tables.

I have only read parts. I have had a year of Biblical Greek and a few years of French, a too-short crash course in Spanish and I want to learn Brazilian (Almost a distinct language from continental Portuguese). 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). LANGUAGE implies more than learning to signal like a firefly or to talk like a parrot. It means more than the unique combination which we call human speech.

The Loom of Language shares much information and spirit with The Seven Sieves. The latter is also very good, but Loom is more comprehensive and easier to find. There is even a scanned copy available on Archive.org. 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.”