Word: linguistics
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...Linguistics itself is the study of a lot of languages most people have never heard of, that are central to the development of some civilization. In a sense, the field stands about midway between mathematics and anthropology. The linguist studies the structure of a language with technics approaching mathematical precision; yet he also tries to relate languages' development, to human affairs...
...Maurer, 63, the lawyer son of a wealthy member of the prewar bourgeoisie, is suave, cultivated, and was enough of a linguist during World War II to spring Dej from prison: dressed in an officer's uniform and purring perfect German, he waved a handful of spurious orders and marched off with a detachment of prisoners, Dej and Ceausescu included...
...plot is an updated modification of My Fair Lady. For a flower girl Lerner substitutes a girl who grows flowers. While Doolittle went to a bachelor linguist to have her accent repaired, Daisy Gamble goes to a bachelor psychiatrist to cure her "hallucinations." Daisy suffers from extrasensory perception (ESP), which means that she answers telephones before they have a chance to ring. An imaginative situation for a musical to be sure, but so far we are still in New York City, and everyone knows an Alan Lerner show must somehow trudge back to historical England...
...tender age of seven. Published in The New Yorker, the note is introduced briefly by Family Historian Buddy Glass, who for years has been garrulously obsessed by the memory of his suicide brother. By the letter, Childe Seymour seems to have been, practically from birth, a perfervid scholar, linguist, spiritual genius and altogether verbose little man who finds everything in life "heartrending," or "damnable." "My emotions are too damnably raw today, I fear," he starts, and in 28,000 words plunges forth to speculate on God, reincarnation, Proust, Balzac, baseball and the charms of the camp director's wife...
Hogben's book is full of clues to understanding alien but associated tongues. He urges the amateur linguist to forget the vowels and concentrate on the consonants, those "fossils" in the evolution of any language. The German word Zunge, for instance, might mystify the uninitiated unless he follows Hogben's advice to substitute T for the German Z. Similarly with the Spanish halcon, which leaps into intelligibility with Hogben's advice to trade...