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

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The book seems outdated in some parts. As languages are living organisms you will find some words here and there in German, English, Portuguese, etc, which are different nowadays, but by no means turns it into a bad reading experience, on the contrary, we see how the languages are still evolving. Just be aware. But this book is more than a guide to foreign languages; it goes deep into the roots of all knowledge as it explores the history of speech. It lights up the dim pathways of prehistory and unfolds the story of the slow growth of human expression from the most primitive signs and sounds to the elaborate variations of the highest cultures. Without language no knowledge would be possible; here we see how language is at once the source and the reservoir of all we know. 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. The spoken language of a speech community is continually changing. Where uniformity exists, local dialects crop up. I am suprised more people on this forum have not read this book considering the high-level of interest in both Germanic and Romance languages.

I have been interested in languages since my big sister started learning her first foreign language and I realized there is such a thing... I was 5. So I know a lot of the things in this book.

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I read the first three chapters of the book. Published during World War II (1943), this book is slightly dated. The author's treatise on the development of various Western languages from their Latin and Teutonic roots, however, was engaging. Taking advantage of the Latin and Teutonic roots would greatly aid learning the Romance and Germanic languages, respectively. Also, I had never read a book that dealt with the history of the alphabet in this much detail. Learn to read languages with interlinear bilingual books that include the original language and an English translation below in a smaller font. ASIN: B0006DCJAU; B0006DHV4E; B0007DWF9O; B0007F22FY; B0007J194K; B0007J2GXI; B000J2R80O; B0018HVHDI; B0027653XO; B0028P2LIO; B003KD8VLO It is interesting book. I read it a number of years ago. It quite long and dated as some have already mentioned. However, it does give a nice survey of the two language families, has the compartive word lists, and also has it own way of approching a new language. Basically, focusing first on "function" words and then branching out from there. What I also love about Bodmer’s work is the sense of joy he tries to convey, the idea that languages are a wonderful puzzle worth solving. When I first read the book many years ago I was inspired by it, driven to master languages the way Bodmer suggested, and I still use many of the ideas in the book as a guide towards my own continuing education in languages and cultures of the world. It’s exhilarating to read, even today, seven decades later, the thoughts of a brilliant mind on the necessity and joy of learning language, and how this goal can best be achieved.

I give it five stars for a very specific reason: the incredible time-saving insights. Here's an example. Inventive Weaving on a Little Loom: Discover the Full Potential of the Rigid-Heddle Loom, for Beginners and BeyondIf we know something about the history of sound correspondence (Chapter V, p. 185). To make the best of our knowledge we should also know something about the evolution of writing itself.