Language City, by Ross Perlin

 Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues, by Ross Perlin. In general, this is a good book. I really mean that. The languages the author highlights are unique, interesting, and sadly on the way out. Seke, Wakhi, Yiddish, N'ko, Nahuatl, and Lenape. The reader learns about these languages in the chapters in part III. (Part II covers NYC, an also interesting section of the book.)

The author is a co-director at the Endangered Language Alliance. I gave money to them or the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages; I can't remember which. Anyway, they do good work. You can find them on Youtube as well if you want to hear some of these languages spoken.

I read the Kindle version of it and in one instance (Seke, as evidenced by Rasmina), the font for the language didn't show. And one example from N'ko was such a small font I barely saw it. But otherwise the Kindle version was good. I'd buy a hardback copy of this because I love language books but the author is such an outspoken liberal and a dishonest one at that, that I don't want this book in my house. 

Yes, eugenics was horrible. But it was not the sphere of only one political party. 

Even when “eugenics” was [a] word known in every household it was hardly the property of any political party.¹ 

With little access beyond Google, I was able to find several references in academic journals that discuss both parties' guilt in the U.S. eugenics movement. I'd think a PhD author would be fairer and do his homework. 

Same with immigration quotas. Yet the author felt the need to mention a Senator by name (149), because he was a Republican.  But when mentioning the "Asiatic barred zone" (149) he forgets to mention that it was passed by a Congress that was majority Democrat in both chambers. Vetoed by a Democrat prez (Wilson) but then both chambers overturned the veto. He mentions the Hart-Celler Immigration Act, which dumped the 1924 Act limiting immigration, but he fails to mention that even in a Democrat-majority House and Senate, not all Democrats agreed; only 74% of Democrats voted for the bill while 85% of Republicans did. But that doesn't fit his agenda. 

The author obviously has issues. He must have tried to get data from Facebook and Tencent (whatever that is) related to these obscure languages and been denied:

The billionaire lords of Facebook and Tencent, who could care less, are the only outsiders with fraught potential access to this accidental archive. (194)

He mentions NAFTA affecting the Mexican economy by bringing "the price of corn and other crops crashing down, forcing farmers off their land" (367) but fails to mention that President Clinton signed it into law. 

And all his Trump derangement. Multiple mentions, especially in the final part where he is begging the reader for money to support ELA. 

Fiercely anti-immigrant politics of a sort not seen in a century drove the rise of Donald Trump... (442)

...the string of emergencies that began with Trump's election is 2016 is far from over... (444) 

 ...owners have become ever more of a political force since the Yemeni bodega strike of 2017, which protested the Muslim travel ban. (451)

Get over yourself. Wanting to protect the sovereignty of your country is not anti-immigrant. And for all that's holy, it wasn't a Muslim travel ban. Executive Order 13769 was a temporary ban on citizens from six nations with known Islamic terrorism ties. That's six countries out of 49 that are majority Muslim. And I think it lasted like two months.

Like in many things (mostly Hollywood, but also in charities), why would you denigrate half your potential audience, or in this case, half your possible charity sources? (And with conservatives giving more to charity than liberals², maybe know your audience.)

Again, the part of the book where he talked about the language map of NYC and the individuals and their languages (RIP, Karen) were great. Everything else, bleck. 

¹ Lombardo PA. Republicans, Democrats, & Doctors: The Lawmakers Who Wrote Sterilization Laws. J Law Med Ethics. 2023;51(1):123-130. doi: 10.1017/jme.2023.47. Epub 2023 May 25. PMID: 37226752; PMCID: PMC10209985.

² Yang Y, Liu P. Are conservatives more charitable than liberals in the U.S.? A meta-analysis of political ideology and charitable giving. Soc Sci Res. 2021 Sep;99:102598. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2021.102598. Epub 2021 Jun 16. PMID: 34429211.

May 2024

 Books read:

• The Small Bachelor, by PG Wodehouse. Another great one from the Master. Story of love, as they always are, this time in NYC. FB Wodehouse group's May read.
• Rosemary's Baby, by Ira Levin. Had to read this after the other one by him below. This one was so good. Wife and I watched the movie right after and holy crap it was so good and pretty much word-for-word from the book. Ruth Gordon deserved the Oscar 100%!
• The Housekeeper and The Professor, by Yoko Ogawa. My one translation this month. Perhaps this year! (Unusual for me; I'll have to go back and check.)
• The Boys from Brazil, by Levin. As discussed in my post, excellent. As was the movie. 
• Ill Met by Moonlight, by W. Stanley Moss. Great story of a little-known op during WWII. 
• Love's Labour's Lost, by Shakespeare. Timeless.
• A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine. Good follow up to the first. 

Books bought: 

• The Small Bachelor, by Wodehouse. In the Collector's Wodehouse hardback. Add it to my list.
• Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York, by Ross Perlin. NYC has more languages spoken in one area than anywhere else in the world. The Endangered Language Alliance are working to document all of them before they die off. Perlin is one of the co-directors of the only organization I'd work for in NYC. 
• The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood. Read the first of the MadAdaam years ago. This one came up for two bucks, so had to.
• The Boys from Brazil, by Levin. For the family book club. Excellent!

Language-wise in May continuing on my Old English journey. Finished through chapter 6 and only today started chapter 7. Nice and slow so I can digest it all. Already reading some wonderful works in the original, like "The Seafarer," from which I have the lines of my next tattoo, if I ever get it:

hu ic, werig, oft in brimlade bidan sceolde

Rough translation: How I, weary, often have had to endure in the sea-roads. Or something like that. Figured that part of the poem is appropriate for my preferred extracurricular activity.

Also finished the June 2023 issue (yes, I'm behind) of Literatura Foiro (Literary Fair). Great little magazine with many articles on Esperanto culture: literature, film, gatherings, language.