Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages by Mark Abley

I was quite surprised to see the response to my last language-related post. I doubt I’ll get the same reaction for this one, but it’s as interesting a book as the other one was.

Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages by Mark Abley

Most books that deal with threatened or extinct languages set out from the start to demonise English. I’ve seen the words ‘parasitical’, ‘pernicious’, and ‘malignant’ used to describe the effect of the English language on other languages in the world. Mark Albey’s book does point to the spread and popularity of English as a significant factor in the decline of many languages, but instead of simply lamenting the loss of some of the world’s more complex tongues, he takes the time to go to places in the world where languages that were threatened with dying out have made a comeback, or are trying to make a comeback. And more importantly, he attempts to analyse the success stories, and see if there are ways that techniques used by revitalised language-speakers can be harnessed to save languages that have not been so fortunate in the past few decades.

In Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages, Abley travels to remote villages in Australia and the American Southwest, to the Isle of Man and to the south of France and to the Caucasus mountains in search of languages that are struggling against extinction. As well as indigenous languages, he also explores the languages of immigrant communities, most notably when he interviews a group of Yiddish speakers in his native Canada. And arguably the best parts of the book are the parts where he speaks about the languages themselves, describing patterns of speech and turns of phrase that would sound unutterably alien to a native English speaker but which are extremely revealing about a language’s history and its ties to the culture in which the language developed.

All in all, Abley argues, it is the linguistic ties to culture that makes the preservation of languages so important. The subject-verb-object structure of English says quite a bit about the importance of the self/subject to an English speaker, but what can be inferred about culture from a language where the subject appears in the middle of the verb, or where verbs can exist without separate subjects, or where the concept of both subject and verb don’t really exist in that language? Spoken Here is a travel book and a linguistics book combined, and the combination works well enough to make it worth looking at.

English-Only Europe? Challenging Language Policy by Robert Phillipson

Considering that I’ve studied quite a bit of European Union history, it surprised me to look back through the reviews I’ve written and find that I haven’t really posted many reviews for the books I’ve read on that subject. Here’s one of them, at least.

English-Only Europe? Challenging Language Policy by Robert Phillipson

It is no secret that over the course of the last century, English has gradually replaced French as the international language of diplomacy and business and even general conversation. One might say that the path to English-language dominance began shortly after the end of World War I, when English and French were used as the official languages of the peace negotiations at Versailles. But with about 20 official languages used in the institutions of the European Union — not to mention the scores of other languages commonly spoken in Europe today — the predominance of the English language has caused no small amount of controversy amongst EU member states. Language is an extremely sensitive subject across the board in Europe, intricately tied to national and regional identities and never far out of the forefront of political and social debate. And while many people in Europe can converse or do business in languages that are not their native tongue, language policy in the European Union is far from cohesive…or even, at times, coherent.

Robert Phillipson is a research professor in the English department of one of Denmark’s largest business schools. His book, English-Only Europe?, examines current EU language policies and makes a fairly convincing argument for the EU to take a more active approach to safeguarding a multilingual Europe into the coming century. The book examines the dangers of leaving general language policy up to individual countries, as well as the problems of merely adopting a laissez-faire attitude toward languages and expecting them to look after themselves. By looking at statistics on language use and language learning both inside and outside the EU, Phillipson considers a wide range of options for creating a more forward-looking set of language policies. Granted, I found some of his ideas a little peculiar — one example being his push for the use of Esperanto as a pivot language in intra-EU communications. Yet most of his suggestions make perfect sense to me: do more to promote and encourage the study of foreign languages and foreign study on all educational levels from pre-primary through post-secondary, look more closely at how non-EU countries manage their language policies (Phillipson mentions Canada and South Africa in this context, as countries worthy of closer study), along with other ideas and suggestions that encourage the learning of another language as a key to better understanding one’s native tongue. And as a native English speaker myself, I am very thankful that Phillipson does not make the critical mistake of completely demonising English, or regarding it as some horrible destructive force that should be feared and shunned in favour of a narrow, insular focus on language defence. The prospect of an ‘English-only Europe’ is not a pleasant one, or one that I would ever like to see come to pass, but the blame cannot be placed solely on the English language and its speakers. A more active and positive approach to the study of other languages has the potential to preserve European multilingualism on all levels — and that multilingualism may very well be one of Europe’s greatest assets in this new, information-driven century.

Reading about language policy is not, I will admit, the most thrilling or engrossing means of spending one’s time unless it happens to be your particular field of study. (It’s only tangentially related to mine.) Phillipson nonetheless does an excellent job of keeping his study in plain English, as the saying goes, and not going off on unrelated tangents or throwing in anecdotes that add nothing to the discussion. I’ve looked through books that make points similar to his in language that appears to be twice as complicated and ten times as unreadable. On the whole, anyone who might be interested in the politics of language and how these kind of politics affect international cooperation might find English-Only Europe? worth investigating.

The Stories of English by David Crystal

A quick note for readers who happen to come across this post in future — don’t hesitate to leave a comment on my reviews, even if you happen to be coming across a review some time after I originally posted it. I do like hearing what other people think of my book reviews…if for no other reason than the fact that it helps me learn how I can write better ones. Thanks for reading!

The Stories of English by David Crystal

The old joke about the ‘purity’ of the English language is that it is anything but pure — it has a distinct tendency to not only borrow words from other languages, but also on occasion to chase other languages down dark alleys, club them unconscious, and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. English is a constantly changing, constantly mutating language, and unlike many other languages there are certain facets of English spelling and grammar that make next to no sense to anyone attemping to learn the language. Forget about the irregular verb conjugations and peculiar plurals; students of English have to wrap their heads around the fact that enough, bough, through, and thorough can look very similar but sound entirely different. Sooner or later, the question tends to arise: how and why did the English language get so weird?

David Crystal’s The Stories of English makes a masterful attempt to answer that question, and in the process provides a history of English that is more engaging and fascinating than the history of a language almost has any right to be. He traces the history of English back through the history of the British Isles and weaves together the stories of the many groups of people who have left their mark on English over the centuries. The native Celtic languages; vernacular Latin and church Latin; the Saxon, Norse, Danish, and French of various invaders; the different tongues of the tradesmen who carried goods back and forth across the Channel, the independent development of native dialects and spellings — all of these affected the formation of English and left marks on the spoken and written forms of the language. And as English-speakers left the islands and travelled across the oceans, the language went with them and took on new dimensions: examples Crystal uses include American English, Australian English, and South African English. Crystal’s book is packed full of anecdotes and interludes that embellish his longer narrative, dipping into such wide-ranging topics as the creation of pat phrases like ‘last will and testament’, precisely what happened to the distinction between the formal and informal you (which many other languages have and English does not), and the classification of accents and speech markers as indications of good breeding. Even tricky explanations of complicated grammar patterns and nonstandard spellings are clear and straightforward (in plain English, even), and the chapters are short enough to make them easy to go back and reread them if you feel that you haven’t quite grasped his point or understood his meaning as well as you’d like.

One of the nicest features of The Stories of English, in my opinion, is that Crystal helpfully provides his readers with links to other, related sections of the book. If he happens to be discussing something that is related to a topic he has already covered or even has yet to mention, there will often be a parenthetical link to the appropriate page right there in the text. In a book that covers as vast and as complex a topic as the growth and development of the English language, these parenthetical links are an absolute godsend. Plus, they also offer a perfectly good excuse for skipping ahead if you really want to finish Crystal’s train of thought, or going back if you want to refresh your memory about a part you’ve already read.

The Stories of English isn’t just a book for linguists or literary historians. Anyone with even the most basic interest in why English is the way it is could benefit from flipping through the pages and seeing what’s inside. I constantly found myself stopping and shaking my head in wonder as I followed the different twists and turns in the development of the language. And best of all, I have to say, is the knowledge that the book doesn’t really end when you finish the last page. The stories of English are still being told, still changing and developing as more and more people use English as their primary language of communication. If you’re reading this book review on a computer screen, then you too are part of the newest chapter of one of the many stories…and best of all, no one really knows if or how these stories will ever end.

The King’s English by H.W. and F.G. Fowler

Today’s book is a delightful romp through the fields of English grammar and syntax.

If that hasn’t put you off already, feel free to keep reading.

The King’s English by H.W. and F.G. Fowler

In 1906, Henry Watson Fowler and Francis George Fowler published a book that began with following declaration:

Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid.

A simple and sensible-sounding statement, true, and a fitting introduction to the Fowler brothers’ complex and often contentious study of ‘the King’s English’ — perhaps the earliest style guide to good writing practices. And the recent Oxford University Press reprint of the original 1906 edition, with a few notes from later editions and a sparkling introduction by Matthew Parris, is a witty and welcome reminder of where the ever-changing English language has been and a hint of where it is likely to go.

Recent commentaries on the state of the English language have left me rather underwhelmed. I don’t have many good things to say about Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots and Leaves, for instance, mainly because I found her authorial voice to be snide and more than a little off-putting. By contrast, the Fowler brothers manage to maintain a tone that usually stays on the side of gentle but pointed correction, as they quote example sentences and passages from newspaper articles and the works of popular authors (Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Eliot) and show how certain grammatical mistakes are common but nonetheless avoidable with a little rewriting and careful attention to detail. Along the way, they delve into facets of the English language that have all but fallen out of use today — there’s a lengthy section on the proper placement, conjugation, and uses of shall and will, for instance. And as might be expected from a book that is more than a century old, quite a few of the style choices that the Fowler brothers regarded as ‘vulgarisms’ or other forms of improper grammar in 1906 have become standard and conventional forms in acceptable writing today. Yet the emphasis throughout The King’s English is on the overall improvement of writing style and expression by eliminating or rewriting cliched turns of phrase, malapropisms, misused metaphors or quotations, stilted syntax…in general, the hallmarks of a lazy writer.

Nearly twenty years later, Henry Fowler would write A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, the style guide that would simply be known as Fowler’s and would set the tone for future style guides like the Chicago Manual of Style. In that context, comparing The King’s English to Fowler’s is like comparing a writing textbook to a style guide. Both will likely tell you what you need to know and refresh your memory if you have questions on proper use and usage, but the former is better for study and the latter is better for reference. Regardless, both volumes have a place of honour on this editor’s bookshelf.