Babel No More (55 page)

technologies of,
10
,
274
–75

travel,
8
,
14
,
24

sea,
68
,
147
,
154

train,
17
–19,
147
–48

“Travelling Linguistics” (Ganahl),
84
–85

trilingualism,
226

Truss, Lynn,
207

Tsimpli, Ianthi-Maria,
94
–99,
283

Tukano language,
190

Turin, University,
6

Turkic
language family,
44
n

Turkish language,
4
,
39
,
42
,
43
,
54
,
132
,
151
,
181
,
250
–51

Twitter,
15

languages featured on,
10

typewriters,
79

Ukrainian language,
16
–17,
104

ultimo dei Mohicani, L’
(Cooper),
40

United Arab Emirates (UAE),
8
,
15
,
85
n

United Nations,
54

United States,
14

counterterrorism strategy in,
71

economic and military power of,
85

English-speaking predominance in,
71
–72,
147
,
148
,
206

intelligence community in,
53
–54,
71

language learning in,
9

Latinos in,
22

University College, London,
67
,
94

Uralic language family,
44
n

Urdu language,
191
,
192
,
197

Vandewalle, Johan,
249
–56,
253,
269
,
293

Vatican,
5

library of,
3

verbs,
11
,
31
,
34
,
82
,
123
,
124
,
239

Victor, Elizabeth,
87

Vietnam,
8

Vietnamese language,
167

visuospatial abilities,
165

Viva el lunes,
109

vocabulary,
34
,
42
,
45
,
99
,
233
,
275

gaps in,
103

memorizing of,
24
,
259

recall of,
11
,
96

shared,
48

Vogt, Cécile,
154
,
172

Vogt, Oskar,
154
–55,
171
–73,
175
,
178

voices, hearing of,
50

Volovick, Reuben,
153
–54

Walkman,
114

Wallachian language,
43

Warlpiri language,
81
,
82

Washington, D.C.,
70
,
132

Washington Post,
73

Watts, Thomas,
41
,
43
,
44
,
100
,
279

Welsh language,
10
,
43
,
75
,
118

Wernicke, Carl,
157

White, E. B.,
207

Will to plasticity,
14
,
85
–86,
107
,
122
,
209
,
212

Wikipedia,
73

William II, Kaiser,
147

Williams, Harold,
73

Winner, Ellen,
142
,
220
,
285

wordplay,
11

words,
22
,
33
,
37
,
38
,
163

choosing of,
142

color,
49
,
280

connecting of,
46

meaning of,
53
,
124

order of,
97
,
99
,
122
–23,
141
,
210
,
240
n

recognition of,
162

rhyming of,
57

spelling of,
78
,
96

structure of,
96

World Atlas of Language Structures,
249
n

World Bank,
85
,
132
–33,
261
,
282

World Tourism Organization,
85

World War I,
147
,
148

World War II,
28
,
255

Yemen,
45

Yiddish language,
148
,
153

YouTube,
73
,
109
,
121
,
127
,
265

Ysaÿe, Eugène,
171
n

Zach, Baron von,
5

Zilles, Karl,
171
,
172
,
175
,
177
–79,
212
,
229
,
287
,
289

Zimmer, Benjamin,
150
,
272

Zoraida,
19

Zulueta, Felicity de,
49
–50

About the Author

Michael Erard is not a polyglot. He considers himself a monolingual with benefits. A native speaker of American English, he has lived in South America and Asia, where he learned Spanish and Mandarin Chinese, but please don’t ask him to say anything in those languages. He has graduate degrees in linguistics and rhetoric from the University of Texas at Austin. His writing about
language, linguists, and linguistics has appeared in
Science, Wired, Atlantic, The New York Times, New Scientist, Slate,
and many other publications, and he is a contributing writer for
Design Observer
. His first book,
Um . . . : Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean,
a natural history of things we wish we didn’t say (but do), as well as a look at what happens in our culture
when we do (and wish we didn’t), was published in 2007. Michael was awarded the Dobie Paisano Writing Fellowship in 2008 to work on
Babel No More.
See more at
www.michaelerard.com
.

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*
Eight he studied critically, eight he could read with a dictionary’s help, and twelve others he considered “attainable.” The eight he could speak he supposedly did so as perfectly as he did his native English.

*
Dutch and Flemish, of course, are widely acknowledged now to be the same language.

*
Semitic, Hurro-Urartian, Afroasiatic, Hellenic, Indo-Iranian, Turkic, Romance, Germanic, Slavic,
Uralic, and Sino-Tibetan.