Friday, January 12, 2007

Spoken Here - Mark Abley

This is a book for anyone fascinated by languages. The author visits speakers of some of the most threatened languages in the world, visiting Australia, USA, Canada, Wales, France and The Isle of Man. He explores why the languages are threatened, looks at the structure of the languages and what is unique to each of them, what the world would lose if each of these languages were to disappear. He also looks at how people are trying to keep their language alive and tries to assess whether each language has any chance of surviving. Anyone who thinks it isn't worthwhile for local authorities in Wales to publish everything in Welsh as well as English should change their minds after reading this book.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Goody! This one is right up my alley. (I didn't use a cliche on purpose. I wonder how long we will be hypersensitive to cliche use since the cool PT prompt?)

Crafty Green Poet said...

HI Gel, it's an excellent book - read it if you can! I think those of who participated in the 'cliche prompt' at Poetry Thursday will certainly be hypersensitive to cliche use and also to opportunities to saubvert a few cliches along the way too... Actually 'right up my alley' would have been a good cliche to use for that prompt...

Anonymous said...

I knew you'd notice that clice as I wrote the comment, so I omitted my often corny puns in your comment section.

I will read it; it's only a matter of time and when.

Gel said...

oh oops, typographical errors in comment. (That preceding one with errors I caught: it was "eros" lol)
I meant "I didn't use that cliche on purpose in my first comment in this string. I know "right up my alley" is a cliche. That was the "joke." I forget how literal writings appear on the computer screen. :)