Sat, 21 Jun 2008: Book Club
A friend of mine would tell me about the book club he was in at a local independent bookstore. A book in Spanish was selected and the discussion of it would take place in Spanish. I attended the other night. I had not read the book but that did not prevent me from jumping in with my carefully considered opinions......
The consideration was not about the topic but about how I was going to say it in Spanish. I usually have trouble in conversations, not paying attention for thinking about what I want to say. But adding to that trying to recall vocabulary and how it fits in with grammar, all the collocations, how to form clauses, etc.
Sat, 24 May 2008: McWhorter’s Language Interrupted
I just started John McWhorter’s new book, Language Interrupted: Signs of Non-Native Acquisition in Standard Language Grammars, Oxford, 2007. Just a few pages in, I already find that the book lives up to McWhorter’s famous ability to reconceptualize or "reframe" familiar notions.
McWhorter may have specialized in creole and pidgin languages, Creolistics, but his ability to cross all linguistic borders makes his books exciting. In addition to his outstanding reputation as a linguist, this young man in his 40s has embarked on a second career as a social commentator on Black America, finding his way to the Manhatten Institute, much to the chagrin of Liberals like me, and much to the discomfort of his fellow conservatives who find him unexpectedly blunt in his appreciation of Black culture.
A long interview with him on Book TV a while back demonstrated his broad interests, with musical theater being prominent among them. What made me salivate is when the camera panned his library of linguistics books in his study. He works primarily at home.