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...Loom of Language (W. W. Norton; $3.75) contains 692 pages of Swiss Philologist Frederick Bodmer's solid lore about meaningful human noise, enlivened by bright pictures and the "irresponsible or facetious remarks" of Editor Hogben, a former colleague of Bodmer at the University of Cape Town. The Loom is lively, but no cinch to read. Hogben recommends an old-fashioned as a preliminary...
Interglossa. A chapter on the evolution of the alphabet opens the book; a section on the need for an international auxiliary language closes it. Author Bodmer reviews the efforts to create such an auxiliary, beginning in 1661, when Aberdeen's George Dalgarno invented his Universal Character and Philosophical Language. He comes down to Basic English and its current competitors (Iret, Swensen, Aiken), in all of which Bodmer sees virtues. But he does not share Winston Churchill's complete enthusiasm for Basic. He favors a synthetic interlanguage rather than a simplified ethnic one. He and Hogben have drafted...
...Author. Frederick Bodmer is a 50-year-old Zurich University Ph.D. He was once a London correspondent for Swiss newspapers, then spent eleven years on Cape Town University's faculty. Communication troubles between South Africa's speakers of English and Afrikaans led him to think about an interlanguage. Later he and Hogben did some motorized pub-crawling from Aberdeen to London and back, planned The Loom between drinks. Bodmer wrote the book in Hogben's Highland croft, is now working on another book in London's intellectual Bloomsbury...