The Loom of Language

THIS joint work is two books closely interwoven. The first is an impressive presentation of well-selected facts about languages — mainly Teutonic and Romance, those with which Anglo-American (to use the authors’ term) is most closely connected. This is addressed to those who, when studying a foreign language, wish to have as wide and clear ideas as possible of what they are doing. We may reasonably hope that most language teachers will study it — indeed they may have to. It is dominated by the idea that it is easier for a biologist to comprehend and to remember the structures of a number of related animals (when the forms “make sense” developmentally) than to tackle the anatomy, say, of a rabbit in isolation. An excellent contrast between the table manners and the traffic rules of a language guides the presentation.

The chief merit of the treatment has yet to be mentioned. Some parts of any language matter much more than others to a learner. The authors really take this to heart and work towards basic vocabularies analogous to the Word List of Basic English. Their results for Swedish, Danish, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian are displayed in tabular form in the Language Museum which forms Part Four.

In such a topic the going cannot be easy, crowded as it must be with examples. Hasty-looking sentences dim the view at moments; but later editions should look after that. On the whole this book is one which general language students have been greatly needing.

The other, the second part, is the most intelligent discussion yet published of the problems of constructing a synthetic or artificial language. The authors pay generous tribute to the transformation which C. K. Ogden’s pioneer work has achieved in this study. They are rightly severe on Esperanto and judiciously critical of the Jack of imagination which has accompanied so many other attempts. Whether Interglossa, Lancelot Hogben’s proposal, has a future, time will show. It is based on the increasingly international terminology of science and operated with what may be a too economical syntax.

All who realize the coming world needs will welcome this presentation of the subject. We should, iiowever, remember that there is an excessively urgent need for a more widespread common second world language. A synthetic international language must wait for adoption upon political and educational conditions which are not yet in sight. Its designing is a worthy task for the collaboration of the best minds, but meanwhile what can we do to ease the linguistic strains the next fifty years will put upon the world? Norton, $3.7o.

I. A. RICHARDS