Arika Okrent
Author
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Pub. Date
[2021]
Language
English
Description
"Perhaps you're reading a book and stop to puzzle over absurd spelling rules, or you hear someone talking and get stuck on an expression, or your kid quizzes you on homework. Suddenly you ask yourself, 'Wait, why do we do it this way?' You think about it, try to explain it, and keep running into walls. It doesn't conform to logic. It doesn't work the way you'd expect it to. There doesn't seem to be any rule at all. In Highly Irregular, Arika Okrent...
Author
Publisher
Spiegel & Grau
Pub. Date
2009.
Language
English
Description
Okrent tells the fascinating and highly entertaining history of man's enduring quest to build a better language. Peopled with charming eccentrics and exasperating megalomaniacs, the land of invented languages is a place where you can recite the Lord's Prayer in John Wilkins's Philosophical Language, say your wedding vows in Loglan, and read "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" in Lojban--not to mention Babm, Blissymbolics, and the nearly nine hundred...