A humanistic approach to linguistics and a scintillating read. (source notes)
Canadian journalist Abley tracks with painstaking, intrepid care languages tottering on the edge of extinction, from Australia to Native America.
The aggressive incursion of English as the universal language of business, education, and entertainment has silenced many other tongues that formerly thrived in tight, regional pockets around the world. Here, the author valiantly sets out to unearth the existence of the most notable of these and record their decline or, in a few spectacular instances, their dogged resurrection. Of the 417 languages listed as “nearly extinct,” 138 are in Australia, and Abley begins his journey on the remote northern coast of this continent with the dwindling ancient tongue of Mati Ke, spoken by a handful of Aboriginal elders. The author repeatedly ponders two key questions: If all languages are created equal, each reflecting a distinct organization of one’s world, then do some simply deserve to die out? Why should we care about their loss? In northeastern Oklahoma, home to descendants of the powerful Creek Nation who speak Yuchi, Abley records the locals’ last-ditch attempts to keep alive their ancestral tongue in the face of their children’s apathy. Most dear to the author’s Welsh-descended heart is his chronicle of the grassroots revival of six Celtic languages, specifically Manx and Welsh, whose speakers displayed a bloody-minded tribalism despite the English decree that their languages were “doomed.” While militant practice of one’s native language might seem the only way to save it, Abley also offers the example of Provençal, the medieval troubadours’ tongue, which was revived by Frédéric Mistral in the 19th century, but lately has become mired in a contested civil debate about its spelling that just might sink it for good. Finally, Abley examines Yiddish as one language that has successfully transformed itself, thanks to vicissitudes of history, from a shameful, servile dialect to a modern holy tongue.
A humanistic approach to linguistics and a scintillating read. (source notes)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-618-23649-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
