Welcome to Litsy!

"In 1900 fully 4% of students in the United States were being taught at least partly in German-- a far higher proportion than all bilingual programs for all languages combined today."

C'mon! Let's make America great again, folks! More bilingual education in more languages! Lol.

Also, can we stop shaming immigrants who don't learn English fast enough? We sure don't support their learning very well.

"Language is usually best left to its own devices."

Ok not quite a quote, but in light of recent reports if I had read this last week it wouldn't have stuck out to me so much.

Though I'm beginning to wonder if these are on purpose just to mess with the reader's head. (It's hard to see but the bottom photo shows "Fist published in Britain..." )

Really enjoying this. I'm such a sucker for language books.

#TBRtemptation post 1! Journalist Greene takes us on a world tour to see how language--the human condition's most diverse aspect--shapes our identities. The Tower of Babel, the bloody origins of the word "shibboleth", what makes for bad English, how language creates an us-vs.-them mentality, the French Academy policing language development, nationalist suppression of Kurdish & Basque, foreign language education, etc. #blameLitsy #blameMrBook ?

"Peeves are like that: my peeves are law, yours are unhealthy obsessions."
I'm enjoying this so far. Language is one of my favorite things to ponder. I'm a descriptive linguist all the way, baby! It's your language. Bend it to your will.