Chinese Characters across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese

Chinese Characters across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese by Zev Handel

For the most part, Chinese characters represent individual things such as objects or actions. In theory this would enable them to be understood across multiple languages. In some sense they can. Japan users Kanji to represent ideas that would be understood by those that know Chinese. Korea and Vietnam had also used Chinese characters for some communication. Ancient Chinese was primarily a literary language that would be used to communicate ideas and not necessarily one spoken by normal people. The pictographs were intelligible, shared ideas. However, they were just part of the language. Everyday speech also has some indication of sounds and grammatical structure. Ancient Chinese was similar to Latin in that it could communicate ideas across languages, but could not display the vernacular spoken language. Modern Chinese has adopted from ancient Chinese to write modern Mandarin. Japanese has incorporated Hirigana (and Katakana) with the characters for Japanese. Vietnamese and Korean have pivoted away from the characters altogether, adopting their own alphabet or a Latin letters for writing. The book has been adapted from an academic work for a general audience and still has some of its academic feel while covering the topic generally.

Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language

Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language by Adam Aleksic

TikTok and short form video of accelerated the changes in language. Subgroups often adopt their own slang internal to the group. This will sometimes "Escape" the confines and become widely accepted. The original group may feel it "lost" its language and go on to something else. The cycle has gone on for some time, with African American Vernacular providing many words that came into modern usage (such as "cool") We see more and more new terms rise up and spread quickly due to the widespread reach and repetition of video.

The Indo-Europeans Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution is Rewriting Their Story

The Indo-Europeans Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution is Rewriting Their Story by J. P. Mallory

A mysterious group of "Indo Europeans" spoke a language that is the ancestor of almost half the world's native language. Where did this language come from? Where did the people live? Depending on how the facts are analyzed, very different conclusions can be drawn. Add in desire of some groups to show their ethnic superiority, and things get even more complicated. This book looks at various theories that have been proposed and why they are good and bad. I especially appreciated the examples given with "historical" language. Using some of the techniques used to locate the Indo-Europeans, you could get very misleading locations for the original English or Latin speakers. There are many possible options for a homeland. Is one of them valid? Or are there many? Alas, we don't have an answer sheet.

Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Seven Little Words

Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Seven Little Words by John McWhorter

Pronouns have an interesting history. Some merge together, while others separate. English lacks a plural you that is common in other languages. There are many local alternatives (like ya'll), but they are usually considered to be lower class or informal. Today, there has been movement in many language to adopt gender-neutral pronouns. "They" has been adopted in the English language. However, this has lead to some ambiguities in understanding. (You may be able to swap "they" with "she". However, you must then make sure "they" is disambiguated from other versions of "they" in it's classical sense.

Sometimes pronouns are adopted in seemingly improper ways that may actually make sense. Women will often use "you guys" to refer to a group of females, but would never refer to a woman as a "guy". Is this a group empowerment? A shop attendant will say "ya'll come back" to a single person. Maybe there is a hidden plural in this? "Me" and "I" are confusing. "Me and Julio" is technically incorrect when both are subjects, yet "I and Julio" is never used. "Julio and I" is the "official" version. But is it really better?  Some of our pedanticness is based on comparison to other languages rather than "historical English. As long as we are understood, does it matter? 

Analysis of language. history and evolution is always interesting.

The Life of Language

The Life of Language: The Fascinating Ways Words are Born, Live & Die by Sol Steinmetz and Barbara Ann Kipfer

Though this book is well structured, each chapter could easily be read independently. There are explorations of various ways that works enter the English language. Some words are formed by moving existing words to a new part of speech. Others are coined, come from foreign languages or come from proper names. There are many other sources for words. The book provides details on how words enter the language and provides abundant examples. English is especially flexible. While it has Anglo-Saxon roots, there have been various waves of strong influence, such as Viking and Norman French. The language does not have a governing body, and thus is very flexible in adding new words that are found useful. The global spread of the language helped to allow words get adopted from many sources. Words continue to be added from many sources, such as technology. Some words gradually lose popularity as they have "better" words for their use. (However, retronyms are common to refer to items such as "acoustic guitars" that need modern clarification.) 

Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever

Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever by John McWhorter

What makes a word profane? It is not easy. Often a word will have fairly innocent origins, then gradually morph into an "unspeakable". The mores of the time strongly influence what is considered a "nasty" word. Deity, reproduction and excrement have been sources of profanity. Today, identity has become the primary taboo, with racial, ethnic and sexual orientation slurs being most "extreme". Words will often start innocent, and then morph through associated meanings and sound changes. Then the "obscenity" will change. The times will also influence the words. Euphemisms will then appear for the obscene words. These will continue to evolve. Innocent words of today may have come from this evolution, while the most extreme words today may have been innocent in the past.

Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It

Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It by Gabriel Wyner

Why can toddlers easily pick up a language, why adults struggle? Partially because we are doing it wrong. Toddlers are exposed to huge amounts of language. They are willing to try to make many mistakes. They try a lot. They learn the most common words and grammatical structures first. They don't have preconceived notions of sounds. As adults (or teens) we are often "too smart" for our own good and don't spend enough time practicing.

How can we resolve this? We have many tools available. Google image search and youtube videos can be helpful for informal exploration. RhinoSpike, Forvo and Foreign Service Institute are all useful free resources. The author also pitched his own Fluent Forever as a pay site. There is abundant media available in multiple languages. (Harry Potter was mentioned as a good example.) TV series are great because you get some familiarity. Music is not as good. (We often sing incorrect version of lyrics in our native language.)

Even with the best tools, we need to devote work and practice. It does take time. Full immersion is the best way to learn. Learning the most frequent vocabulary first is the best way to go. It lets us gradually build on that as we learn more. Speaking without an accent requires some "unlearning". Each language has its own phonemes that may differentiate in ways your mind is not used to. Practice and experience help. The author also encourages flash cards as well as some memory associations. Learning a language takes time and exposure.

Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture

Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture by Jean-Baptiste Michel and Erez Aiden

The Google book-scanning project gives us easy access to a great library of books and can help us understand the evolution of language. The authors were able to analyze how words changed and when they changed. Many irregular verbs have slowly gone out of style. The least used ones are the first to regularize, while the more common ones are slower to change. We can also see how words like babysitter gradually evolve.

The describe their findings as well as the work they have gone through to be able to do the research. There are plenty of great nuggets in the book. However, the writing, while personable comes up lacking.

Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning

How does language work? Does the human brain always produce a real-world representation of what is being discussed? There are a few theories that have been used. They all seem to have their good and bad points. It is also interesting how our mind feels in details that are not present in the actual words. We are able to construct a more full understanding from a small number of words.

The mind is good at simulating activity. Athletes can "practice" just by envisioning in their mind what they need to do. (Though they need to do it right - if they practice striking out, it will just help them striking out.) The brain can do just about everything in "dry run" mode before hitting the actual movement.

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English

English is the ugly stepchild of the Germanic languages. It has adopted various grammatical features, pronunciation and vocabulary from other neighbors. Meanwhile, the Germanic languages have plenty of unique features that separate it from other Indo-European languages. What are some of these features and why did they come about?

Language evolves more quickly when different people intermingle without writing things down. English has various periods of limited literacy and connections with others. This contributed to many changes. Alas, these factors also make it difficult to trace the changes. Making it even more difficult, writing tends to be more conservative than spoken language. Thus, we may still see things written one way even after the language has moved on. 

Widespread writing and communications give us better records of language change. However, they also tend to significantly slow the rate of change. 

English has had a lot of interaction and influence from other languages. The author brings about the possible interaction of the Phoenicians with early Germanic speakers leading to some of the language changes. The Celts, Vikings, and Norse all played a role in influencing the language. There have been changes in both grammar and vocabulary that appear to be influenced by others.

The author is less convinced of the influence of language on thoughts and actions. There are some small cases where culture seem to match language. However, it is difficult to determine whether this was culture influencing language or the other way around.

Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

Do languages influence the way people think and act? This is a controversial topic in linguistics. Past attempts to look at this have been riddled with "supremacist" tendencies to show that "inferior" languages were used by inferior minds. This lead to a dismissal of most of these arguments. 

Another problem with comparing languages is the similarity of most of the languages being compared. The commonly studied Western European language have many elements in common. Much larger differences are found in aboriginal languages (many of which are dying out.)

One example given in the book was that of positioning. Positions are typically given relative to the person (left, right) or absolute (east, west). In English, we will switch between the two based on the situation. However, there are some languages that exclusively use absolute positions. This results in changes in how they view the world. They tend to have better ability to know the positioning wherever they are.

Other examples of differences are with gender. Some languages have strong genders, while others do not. German has gender for everything, but the gender does not necessarily correspond to what we would think of as the sexual gender. This can lead to some rich understanding in poetry that is missed when translated to English. There have also been studies showing impacts in reaction time with gender matching the appropriate gender.

Color is another element that differs from language to language. Some languages have common words for more colors, while others have fewer unique colors. While people can distinguish between the different colors, those without language distinction are more likely to mentally group the colors together.

This book scratches the surface of the impacts of language in thought. While any language could theoretically express any thought, some can do it much easier than other. While this is controversial in the realm of spoken languages, it is a regular argument in computer programming languages. Different languages are better for accomplishing certain tasks. Programs written in languages have different reputations. Languages like C# and VisualBasic tend to attract immature programmers, while C and Assembly are written by masters. Perl is great and text processing, but horrible at reusing. Even though C, Java and JavaScript have a similar base level syntax built on curly braces, they are all very different and used for different programs. Are there significant differences in human languages?

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World

While there are plenty of books chronicallying the rise and fall of empires, this book focuses on the languages that often (but not always) rise and fall with them. Often the imperial power will impose its language on the conquered. However, there are cases where a different languages is adopted for convenience. The imperial language may come to be the common language spoken by everyone. Or, it may merely be used by the elite, while the local language continues to be used for everyday speech. Sometimes the language may spread by people using it as a "prestige" or a language of culture. A common tongue my splinter into local dialects, or a single dialect may rise up to become a common tongue. Religion may cause a certain language to maintain prestige.

The book is very long and full of examples throughout history. It follows a mostly chronological history of the world through languages. Languages like Sanskrit, Hebrew and Arabic have been tied to religions and have had long histories. Mandarin Chinese is tied to a large empire and has a long history. By using pictographs, many different dialects can easily communicate with each other. English has had a relative short history, yet has become an important language. It had barely come into being when the country was conquered by the Norman French. They attempted to put their language in place for administration, yet left the local language for the commoners. Eventually English came back, and became well used in the colonies. English supplanted the multitude of local indigenous American languages. (In part due to the people dying an due to the many different languages.) The greater number of colonists helped English dominate the other European languages. Spanish and Portuguese had similar fates in their empires (though for somewhat different reasons.) The Dutch had a vast empire, but very little language staying power. They did, however, help give birth to the Malay/Indonesian language. 

France became an important tongue in Europe and a large lengua franca. This was due in part to the early unification of France. The country had a standardized language and also had a more unified environment and power in their country. However, in the last century, French has lost the position of the "global language" to Islam. 

Arabic became extremely common due to the connection with Islam.

The book focuses only on some of the larger languages. There are occasional generations on reasons for the rise and fall of languages, with analysis of a few common reasons. However, the main focus is on exploring the history.

The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention

Tape recorders did not exist in the time of cavemen, making it difficult to know how language started. We can piece together some clues from written texts. However, by the time these texts came into being, language had already been around for some time. We can, however, look at how language has changed.

Often words start out with nouns used to represent a certain thing. Later, these may be adapted to refer to a property of the things. (For instance "orange" refers to both the fruit and the color orange.) Verbs come out of actions related to things. Grammatical constructs arise from different words. These are often simplified as they become more common. ("gonna" is an example today.)

In the past, people would often refer to a rise or decline of language. However, language often changes in more of a loop. Commonly used words may see the sound collapse. Later emphasis may be added bringing back a greater sound. A words may be combined and added, and then later separated. Sounds may change based on patterns of similarity or ease of pronunciation.

This book has an interesting exploration of how language is changing, has changed and may have changed in the past.

Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything

Translation is an interesting endeavor. No too languages are exactly alike. Meanings of words evolve over time. Even if words started from the same root, they may have different nuances today. Grammatical structures may also differ. Poetry can be even more challenging as meter, rhyme and association are all different.

The European Union has declared that each different language version of a law is official. There is no source and translation. However, this has resulted in court challenges where one version of the law ends up having a slightly different meaning than another. Thus, you can't get away from comparing different "official" versions.

There is also the concept of "translating up" and "translating down". There are also sometimes translations where the source includes different dialects or even text in the target language. When translating a Russian novel with French to French what do you do? Do you just leave the French as French? Or do you do something else to make it clear that it was in a different language than the main novel? How do you show accents that are written in different ways?

The translator plays a key role in changing the way in which we experience a work. A difficult novel may be more accessible (or vice versa). Technical jargon may be different. There may be subtleties that are missed or different in translation. In some places (like Japan), translators are well respected and regarded as talented artists in their own right.

The balance of translators can also be a challenge. In the EU, there may be many people in a poorer country that eager to work as translators. However, there is greater need for translators from the wealthier countries, but they have many other job opportunities.

This book provides an eye opening voyage into the field of translation. English speakers often don't pay much attention to translations. The bad translations that we sometimes see in cheaply translated instruction manuals are perhaps the only time we notice that there is some skill needed for good translation.

Don't Believe a Word: The Surprising Truth About Language

Language is something key to the life of all humans, yet the study of language is often confined to the ivory tower of academia. This book attempts to provide everybody with insights from the field of linguistics.

Different languages have different ways of expressing things. It is difficult to translate things exactly the same between two languages. Sometimes words have multiple meanings. Some language have very dense construction, while others require many words to say the same point. Grammar and structure differ. Some language have gender, while others do not. Two words may have similar origins in different languages but gradually evolved to have different nuances. It all makes a challenge translating, with the best hope usually a close approximation of the original.

Languages are always changing and evolving. Identifying a "proper" or "correct" version of the language is not nearly as important as understanding. Purists have made efforts to look at the true "original" meaning of words, but these may not bear relevancy to what it means today. (The word decimate was given as an example. It was related to a tenth, but now means destruction.) Language is changing, not necessarily getting better or worse.

The book spends a while discussing Chomsky and universal grammar. Then a lot of time is spent refuting Chomsky's arguments. There is some interesting ways of looking at language as a whole, but it does get fairly erudite. There seemed to be a lot of this that I had seen before.

Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing: Encounters with the Mysteries and Meanings of Language

Daniel Tammet has had interesting experiences with languages. In this book he meanders around to provide various language anecdotes.

He starts with his experience teaching English. He was not a fun of the "boring" way that language is taught as a second language and seeks to make it more interesting. Some of this interesting language is grammatically correct nonsense, but it helps those to learn langauges.

He goes on to look at different languages. There is different meaning that comes out of different languages. There are also languages like Manx that are barely surviving.

There were many interesting bits, but the book seemed to lack a cohesive story.

Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty Languages

Lingo has 60 short chapters exploring languages of Europe. Most languages also include some English loan words from the language as well as a "useful" word from that language that is not in English. The languages include many of the "big ones" (such as English and German) as well as many smaller ones, such as the extinct Dalmatian or the "back from the dead" Cornish.

The chapters are mostly fun explorations of unique aspects of a language, performed in a light-hearted manner. Chapters are grouped with subheadings such as "Intensive care" and "Werds, wirds, wurds". The language chapters are written in a variety of different styles with different goals. There is a lesson on learning cyrillic in the Russian chapter, while Hungarian is a treated as a counseling visit for language isolation. There is even a section on "identifying a language" entirely by the script. The entertaining book gave me the desire to explore little known languages, while also exposing the fuitlessless of trying to speak them fluently.

Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages

 Sometimes, you can just judge a book by the cover. I saw this book on the shelf at the library and was immediately intrigued. The book did not disappoint.

You only need to know 20 of the thousands of world languages to be able to converse with half the earth's population. Alas, learning to speak that many fluently is beyond the skills of mere mortals. However, understanding a bit about the languages spoken can help to understand the people.

The author explores each of these top 20 languages. For each, there is a brief summary of the grammar, sounds, loanwords, exports, sounds, scripts and number of speakers. Then there is a discussion of the language. Or more accurately, a discussion of some topic that is in some way related to the language. 

The author's feeble attempts to learn Vietnamese consume most of that chapter. The various tones and sounds are only the first challenges of learning the language. (It is also a language with very few second language learners.) For German, we learn about a study of the "weirdness" of languages. German does score very high on the weirdness scale - but so do English and Spanish. Perhaps there are other reasons the language is difficult.

Japanese gets two chapters, one in the order where it ranks, and then a bonus one after Chinese. The initial one discusses the rules for "women's Spanish". The bonus one goes into explanation of why the Japanese writing system is so difficult. The Japanese chose to adapt the Chinese characters for their language. However, the Japanese language was so different, that they needed additional indicators to help make it intelligible. Thus hiragana (and katakana and romaji.) Using the Latin alphabet alone could make things a lot easier, but the writing system is already deeply ingrained in society and thus remains.

Some languages have experienced revolutionary change. Turkish suddenly switch to the latin alphabet. And that was only the begging. There were multiple attempts to "purify" the language to use just Turkish words. This resulted in massive changes to the vocabulary. (And included a number of "fake etymologies" to justify various words.)

For Javanese, the complexity was its downfall. It includes multiple degrees of formality, with some words being totally different depending on the formality. This may have become a strong part of the language during colonial rule. (The higher-status locals may have encouraged it as a way of keeping their higher position.) When it came time to choose a national language, the simpler Malay (Indonesian) was chosen instead of the the more dominant Javanese. 

Indian languages occupy multiple positions in the top 20 and have had much more language-related contemporary conflicts. Most Indian languages have their own script. To the uninitiated, they look like similar "hanging letters", but they are about as similar as Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts. There is strong identity associated with local language, and having a unique script is often seen as an important part of this. In the case of Urdu and Hindi, it is essentially the same language, with the Muslim Urdu written in Arabic script, while Hindi uses the Indian Devanagari script. In Sri Lanka, a large scale civil war took place between speakers of different languages.

The languages of European colonialists make up a large number of the to 20. The book explores the reasons why small Portuguese ended up sticking around in many of the colonies, while similarly small Dutch was mostly superseded by other languages. English and Spanish also hold huge roles in the former colonies. French still has some usage in former colonial holdings. However, the use of French as a lingua franca has faded.

The languages dominant in the world today are in different stages of their usage and dominance. Persian and Turkish both had periods of imperial dominance in the distant past. In Asia, there are many languages spoken by a large nation state. In Africa, there are a large number of languages spoken in close proximity. Often a "very important language" is used for official or external communication purposes. (This language is often English or Swahili.) The relationship of people with their language differs significantly across the world. English is dominant as a lingua franca today despite many quirks. What impact will AI have on languages? There are plenty of interesting things to explore.

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution

Babel is set primarily in an alternate version of 19th century Oxford, England. The British empire spans the globe and is rapidly industrializing. The British assume that other people are eager to come to England and partake of the fruits of prosperity. Many laborers see their livelihood taken away by the industrialization and struggle to adapt. China has very little need for English goods and destroys the opium sitting in the harbors of Canton. Britain is ready to go to war to force Opium on the people.

So far, it is mostly historical. The "fantasy" part involves linguistics and silver.  Silver can heal disease, power machines and so much more. However, it only gets its power when words are spoken by an expert. It is the difference between two "similar" words in different languages that grants this power. A group of skilled translators work in a secure building in Oxford. They are linguistic experts. Many have been recruited from all over the world. They have been specially trained in different languages. Their special skills provide the power behind the "industrial revolution".

The book centers primarily on foreign youth who have been taken from their homes and come to Babel. A Chinese youth is taken from his family and taken under a guardianship before going to Oxford. These youth also meet with a secret group of other Oxford students who are opposed to the societal change. On a trip to Canton, they become disenchanted with what is going on (and accidentally kill a guardian.) They return to Oxford and lock themselves into the tower and withhold silver from society. This leads to a collapse of Oxford and then other parts of England.

The premise and the linguistic power is very well done. My biggest complaint was that it was not carried out enough. It would be possible to take away silver and just consider this "historical fiction". Why not eliminate the fantasy elements to explore the challenges of Anglo-centric industrialization? Or take the opposite approach and go further with the fantasy to explore more of the long term impacts?

Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning

Louder Than Words provides a brief overview of the philosophy and physiology of language. The human concept of language is more advanced than anything in the animal kingdom. Humans are often creating "mental images" of the language as they are hearing it. Athletes can improve heir performance by visualizing their activity because it is the same part of the brain that activates. People also process the language as they hear it, even guessing the remainder of a partially uttered word. The grammatical structures of various language do, however, influence how they are processed.
The book contains a mixture of interesting information about language, but reads more like a research summary than a book.