The Five-Minute Linguist: Bite-Sized Essays on Language and Languages - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 184553199X ISBN 13: 9781845531997

Publisher: Equinox Publishing Ltd, 2006

Synopsis

Language is a vital part of everybody's life, and nearly everybody is interested in knowing more about it. It's all too easy for people to lose interest, though, when the answers to their questions turn out to be long and technically challenging. "The Five-Minute Linguist: Bite-sized Essays on Language and Languages" takes a new approach to making accurate and up-to-date knowledge about language accessible in a non-academic way. It consists of 60 short chapters adapted from the weekly scripts of a popular U.S. public radio series on language. The scripts, contributed by a cross-section of leading professional linguists in America and abroad, address popular questions like "How many languages are there in the world?" "Is elementary school too early to teach foreign languages?" and "How good is machine translation?" They are written with a light touch that has been highly successful in reaching an audience of intelligent non-specialists. The book preserves that light touch while adding such features as an index (to help readers connect topics touched on in more than one chapter) and suggestions for follow-up reading.

About this title

About the Author

E. M. Rickerson has a Ph.D from the University of California at Berkeley and is Director Emeritus of the award-winning language program at the College of Charleston (S.C.). Formerly a language program director in the U.S. government, he now consults on the development and improvement of language programs at the university level. In 2005 Dr. Rickerson created a radio series on languages ("Talkin' About Talk"), which was broadcast on public and college radio stations -- and on which The Five-Minute Linguist was based Barry Hilton is a freelance writer/editor and independent scholar living in Maine. He was a member of the editorial board that reviewed the radio scripts on which The Five-Minute Linguist was based. He has travelled and lived in both Europe and Asia, making professional use of Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, French, and German in a variety of jobs. He describes himself as an "armchair philologist and recovering polyglot."

Edition details

• Publisher: Equinox Publishing Ltd
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 184553199X
• ISBN 13: 9781845531997
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224
• Editor: Rickerson E.M., Hilton Barry