Native tongues
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Native Tongues is a book by the linguist Charles Berlitz
It is a list of words in different languages, etymology and questions with speculations far and wide about words.
It mentions how many thousands of languages exist, in a day when most people seemed to think that their language was one of the few that existed, whether animals have language.
It tries to explain how languages started and how they spread and decline, how similar many languages like english and german are, how gender-dependent language can be.
It explains the origins of words and what they really mean to people, examining words of love and of insults in different countries, languages and cultures.
An example of Etymology: How the Llama got its name. The Spaniards came to South America, pointed at the animal, and asked what they called it. ¿Cómo se llama?
Much of the book is taken up by listings of good and bad translations. Differences between British and American English are listed.
The book is a light read, with warm humour and many interesting historical and linguistic facts, written in a time when this was less well known than now, and made the interesting subject of languages accessible to non-scholars.
To Charles, a language is much more than simply words, grammar, syntax and phonology. It is connected to culture, and a part of what makes a person and a way of thinking.
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