Books
I finished Steven Pinkers, The Language Instinct a few days ago. It was good. It was about 420 pages and it took maybe 3 days to read. I enjoyed it. Its a book about linguistics. I think the idea is that there is something genetic about the human capacity to talk. I am not sure why this is such a big idea. But it seems to be what Noam Chomsky made his name from. Other than that, he talks about how languages are structured and how some languages seem to have evlolved from Indo-European. I learned that the western alphabetical languages derive from a Canaanite source. All in all I'd give it a 3.5/5.
Along similar lines, there was a book I read a while ago called Power Of Babel by John McWhorter. That was another good book. I think I liked it a little more though. 4/5 maybe. It was kind of a comparative linguistics book. It talked about how different languages say things in different ways. Like how some languages don't use 'the' for example. Or how some Asian languages have 6 different tones to say the same words. Just tasty stuff.
Right now I am re-reading Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horowitz. Tony lives in Virginia and runs into a group of Civil War re-enactors. He travels around the South visiting Civil War sights, talking to people about what they think about the war and the South and other stuff. Its worth re-reading.
posted by OlaAmigos @ 10:01 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Hey Ed,Good job on the blog...
When I took Japanese a few years ago, even though we were only taught the basics, our instructor told us that intonation is a big part of everyday conversation. One word might have many meanings, but the listener determines the meaning from the intonation and the conext in a sentence.
Of course English does this, too, which is why I've heard it can be maddening to learn for non-native English speakers.
As an off the wall example, In the movie "BASEketball" there is a scene where the two main characters are angry with each other and have an argument (of sorts), but all they say is "Dude." They just go back and forth saying, "Dude," but you can guess their emotions by they way they say it.
Of course, I think all languages have words that have more than one meaning, and probably more than one way to say something. As an example from work, what most people call "pink eye" is what doctors call conjunctivitis.
You should check out a book called "The Code Book." It came out a few years ago and I picked up at an airport bookshop for something to read on the flight. What's most interesting is it talks about the history of encrypted communications. From simple substitution and the Ceasar Shift through the codebreakers of WW2 and up through to PGP. It's an interesting book showing the evolution of making and breaking codes.
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