The Loom of Language: An Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages

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Why learn linguistics? We learn how older languages like Old English forked into German and English, and that there are a few common changes to know. e.g. in Wasser and “water”, W in Old English has not changed over time and remains the same in English. In German it sounds like V. The Old English word wæter had a hard T consonant that survived to English, but evolved to “ss” and softened in German. The point of learning this is that there are a handful of these changes you can learn and then you will automatically know hundreds of words without effort. Let’s first illustrate the game more fully using English, taking a closer look at each category in turn, before turning to a few other languages. Datu (Sultan)/ datu (rich) is a (likely metonymic) homonymic capitonym. Different sound, Same sign, Different meaning

Interestingly, WWII and the Balkan wars in the 90’s were what encouraged me to start learning languages in the first place. I wanted to read the original documents and journals and newspapers and try to understand why wars happen and where the hatred for other human beings comes from. There are still several armed conflicts happening all over the world, and the racist propaganda against immigrants in several countries, including both my home and adopted countries, is what keeps me learning languages – so that one day I can help those immigrants, and especially refugees, adjust to their new lives and fight against the discrimination. Perhaps I am a bleeding-heart liberal when it comes to the underprivileged (especially the poor who are usually immigrants) but rampant inequality among groups of people is heart-breaking to me; and even though it sounds trite and clichéd, I still believe that learning foreign languages plays a large part in making the world a better place. This book is a product of its time. The author was multilingual but not a linguist. The book was written right after WWII. The author's purpose was to aid people to be able to communicate with each other so that understanding between people would contribute to the prevention of future wars. Bodmer also knew seventy years ago that children do not learn new languages any more easily than adults, but this also remains a popular misconception. I personally think this idea prevails because it lends an obscure layer of magic to the act of learning a language – the idea of a preternatural skill only the very young possess, perhaps because they are closer to their origins or something equally silly. This excuses adults who have failed to learn, and more importantly excuses the techniques that have failed to teach them! Joy and Wonder Yoga (योग) can be read as joga in Hindi and would still mean the same (it is common to read the sound ‘ya’ as ‘ja’ in different parts of India).I’m looking forward to someday using the section about working within the Romance and Teutonic languages. e.g. if you know the German or Dutch word, you can deduce the meaning of Swedish or Danish words. Here's an example from the Lord's Prayer that many English speakers could probably read already.

It is divided into four parts. Part I is a “natural history” of language. Part II covers the “hybrid heritage” of English as a language which straddles the Germanic and Romance branches of the Indo-European language tree. Part III covers language problems and planning movements. Part IV is a “language museum” of comparative vocabulary tables. Capitalisation of all nouns, as in German, was abolished in 1948, leaving capitonyms such as venstre (left) and Venstre (the Left) as heterographs. Different sound, Same sign, Different meaningIn less than a thousand years what was a local dialect may become the official speech of a nation that cannot communicate with its neighbors without the help of an interpreter or translator. All 8 combinations of identities and differences in sound, sign and meaning represented on a 2x2x2 cubic structure Nayan (નયન, pronounced nayan), Netra (નેત્ર, pronounced Nētra) and Lochan (લોચન, pronounced Lōcana) all mean eyes There are examples of different sounds with the same sign owing to different regional pronunciations, but such differences do not differentiate between alternative meanings. Same sound, same sign, different meaning: The first part of the book starts with the history of human language and alphabets and leads into morphology and syntax of several languages, and ends with the classification of languages throughout the world. The second part focuses on learning vocabulary (from the given lists) taking advantage of similarities among languages and sound shifts that cause predictable changes from one language to another. What I always found most important, however, was the assertion that you should learn certain words first, such as personal pronouns, auxiliary verbs, demonstratives, prepositions, conjunctions, etc. (essentially function words) because they are the most common and least recognizable when they change cases.

Sidenote: In linguistic circles people love to dig into exceptions and point out when rules break down, which can make learners abandon something incredibly useful for fear of making mistakes. But you should not be discouraged by ivory-tower elitism. You are going to make mistakes and fall into traps no matter what, so don’t get discouraged by exceptions. I give it five stars for a very specific reason: the incredible time-saving insights. Here's an example. Meanwhile, people seem to enjoy playing this game in a language they know. If you’d like to correct or add to the examples in any of the above languages, or try out the game yourself in another language, I’d be delighted to hear from you. I’ve included a table after the notes below which may help by providing examples in English in each of the six categories. There is so much great information in here that it requires repeat readings over several years, especially Part II. Consider this book a meta-manual for learning how to learn languages. The Loom of Language shares much information and spirit with The Seven Sieves. The latter is also very good, but Loom is more comprehensive and easier to find. There is even a scanned copy available on Archive.org.

The loom of language

This book is a combination of a reference book, with parts meant to be consulted as needed, and some chapters meant to be read from beginning to end. The sections of interest to me right now were written for a very specific audience: native English speakers intent on learning Romance and Teutonic languages. There are sections devoted to learning other Romance languages once you know your first one, I hope to make use of this someday! That narrow focus allows a degree of specific insight missing from similar books. If pronunciation always closely follows spelling, this category is empty for Bisayan. Different sound, Same sign, Same meaning