Customer Reviews

The Loom of Language: An Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages

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Having spent the past year learning Italian, German, and French, I can safely say that this text encapsulates and formulates most of the linguistic revelations I had, and that it furthermore does the same for Dutch and Scandinavian languages, as well as containing fascinating insights into non-Indo-European (called Aryan in the book) languages such as Chinese, Finnish, and Hungarian. Outdated? In some respects, undoubtedly. But still useful and enthralling? Unless you happen to feel like wading through several semesters of foreign languages and philology to come to the same gestalt view and connaissance available in 600 or so well-written pages, absolutely.

The theme of this book is 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 demonstrates that it is as easy to learn several languages at once as it is to learn one; 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 rather than in the abstract manner of textbooks.

(...)

A good reason exists why The Loom of Language, first published in 1944, is still in print. It remains one of the best overviews of Indo-European and Near East languages to date. While a basic grasp of linguistic tools will help, the reader essentially only needs an understanding of English grammatical rules to get through the book. The explicit goal of The Loom of Languages is to introduce readers to a broad range of languages, language timelines, language roots and the tools necessary to understand a wide variety of linguistic patterns so as to learn new languages. The greatest asset of The Loom of Language is that it never strays off track. The authors carefully, consistently marry one chapter to the next. This is no dry linguistic workbook either; the authors take the time to explore the history and culture behind various languages, peppering the work with colorful anthropological anecdotes.

If one fault could be listed with The Loom of Languages it would be that a muddy xenophobia trickles into some of the chapter as witnessed by this comment concerning the lack of Greek and Latin language influence in the Eastern Europe of antiquity: "The comparatively late appearance of loan words in the Slavonic lexicon faithfully reflects this retardation of culture contact with more progressive communities (page 419)."
Modern day readers unaccustomed to the cultural proclivities of earlier linguists and anthropologists may find the repetitive use of words like "Aryan" or "high culture" unsettling. That said, the nitty-gritty of the data (with a few exceptions) in The Loom of Languages remains unadulterated and essentially informative. Recent discoveries by linguists and anthropologists now contradict some of TLOL findings, but not enough to undermine the goals of the book. A highly recommended book for budding linguists or those with a curiosity about the link between language and history.

This book contains a lot of information on the ways european languages are connected, and how to use this to your advantage when learning other languages. The prejudices of the author show through fairly strongly, however, and the book contains a lot of outdated judgements of one language over another. The book contains some outdated information, and his reviews of Esperanto contain some easily verifiable errors of fact. The word lists in the back of the book are helpful.

This books most significant contribution is that it provides a look into the thought processes behind linguists engagged in constructing auxilliary languages for international communication to solve the problem of translation into so many different languages and dialects.

Essentially Mr. Bodmer states that all of the current proposals for an international language are flawed but "Novial" is the best among them. However, its flaws are that it doesn't take into account the predominance of Greek roots comming into common usage through scientific terminology, not Latin roots that many of the other attempts use. It doesn't respect the widespread knowledge about English even in Asia and neglects the need for a simplified lexicography. He cites "Basic English" as a natural starting point which contains the main 850 words in English used to define all the others.

If a person wanted to get a head start learning the international language of the future. They probably wouldn't be too far off if they studied Greek roots which are easily recognized by native English speakers first such as "haema" for "blood" as in the word hemoglobin. And only the words from the list of the basic 850. Then studied only the Latin roots easily recognized by native English speakers such as "Omni" for "all." Finally, study the simplified spelling and grammar of Novial.

If nothing else, this book will give people a greater understanding of languages in general and perhaps help them speak or write more effectively in any language, even their mother tongue.

On the one hand, my Latin teacher must have spoiled me with a number of extemporaneous analyses on indo-european Languages. Those spirited additions to the standard lesson really caught my imagination, while this book never has. I thought it would, alas. Maybe I just don't yet understand frederick bodmer. It's nice to see that others really found the text helpful and useful, perhaps it even touches on the mythical and mystical, for them.

On the other hand, my favorite source on the origins of language remains the etymologies in the Red Merriam-Webster collegiate dictionary. Despite my present jadedness, I can never forget the utter ecstasy in finding a solid, trustworthy explanation for the origin of almost any word. For me, such trustworthiness was what gave meaning to American civilization....much more than my high-school history classes.

On my first day of my present work, I was tickled pink (nearly Red, if you will) to find a Merriam-Webster collegiate dictionary on my desk. This experience of my first day really made me feel at home. I always imagined that one of the executives must have had the same thought on Merriam-Webster and that is why it found its way to my desk. Those first days were truly special.