Monday, May 26, 2014

S13: The Miraculous Birth of Language

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a truly terrible book come out of the Biblio-Mat so it was almost a relief to find this book. Almost.

Yep...

Title: The Miraculous Birth of Language

Written by R. A. Wilson and published in 1941, this book is as nondescript as you can get with a plain blue cover and the title on the spine. Having taken a few linguistics classes in university, I’m quite aware of how in-depth books on the history of language can get, as well as how dry they can be. Reading through the first chapter of this, The Miraculous Birth of Language is no exception.

As plain as it gets.

The preface, though, was rather enlightening.

Evolution beyond that of languages.

While it doesn’t read like a textbook, it does study the birth of language in depth with a questions and answers tone. Not quite a lecture, but also not quite storytime.

Mixing science and linguistics history...

...doesn't always end well.

But drawings of animals always do.

Definitely not as sleep-inducing as some of the linguistics books I’ve read since it has a lot of diagrams and images, but I think it would be safe to say the highlight of the book is the 28 page preface from George Bernard Shaw.

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