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The Tree of Language
First English edition. A child's introduction to the origins of language, the beginnings of writing, and the making of an alphabet; includes stories of the origins of over 100 words. Lively writing and sound scholarship. Indexed. 216 pages. cloth, dust jacket.. 8vo..
- GenresLanguageNonfiction
216 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1957
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About the author
Charlton Grant Laird
30 books2 followersCharlton Grant Laird (1901–1984) was an American linguist, lexicographer, novelist, and essayist. Laird created the 1971 edition of the Webster's New World Thesaurus that became the standardized edition still used today. During his lifetime, he was probably best known for his language studies: books, textbooks, and reference works elucidating the English language for the layman along with his numerous contributions to dictionaries and thesauruses.
Source: Wikipedia
Source: Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 12, 2018
This is not a book to be read by a casual reader. If you love words, well then you will enjoy reading this. I read a few pages each morning. It reminded me of when I was a kid reading the dictionary each morning. I can not imagine how much work the authors must have put into writing this book. Their effort is easily worth a 5. I might just go back and change my ratting to a 5. This book will go now to my reference book shelf.
September 14, 2022
Due to the fact that this listing is both incomplete and incorrect, and also that I no longer have the ability to rectify that situation due to my "librarian privileges" being revoked late last year on the basis of spurious nonsense, the only options available to me are either ignoring these issues or stating the proper title, authors and other information here, as a sort of foreword to my review. So, here is that information (matching the stated ISBN 0571051332, 9780571051335):
'The Tree of Language', by Helene & Charlton Laird
(Helene Laird & Charlton Grant Laird)
Faber & Faber Ltd.
1960 (or 1966, or 1970)
This edition is a hardcover re-print of the 1957 U.K. First Edition; the above ISBN was first used for the 1970 re-print, but was also applied retroactively to the 1960 & 1966 hardcover re-prints, which of course had no ISBNs when they were published for the simple reason that the ISBN did not yet exist. In this particular case, it is quite likely that either the 1966 or 1970 edition of this book was assigned a number under the British SBN system (established in 1965), a precursor to the ISBN system (established 1970). As the SBN system was used as a basis for the ISBN system, the 9-digit SBN is easily convertible to an ISBN by simply adding a zero to the beginning. Due to this ease of convertibility, the British publishing industry was somewhat slow to change, and the SBN system remained in use within the U.K. until mid-1974, at which point the new ISBN system had been fully implemented.
The copy I owned, read and indeed treasured as a child, however, was not one of the four separate U.K. hardcover editions listed above; nor was it the 1972 U.K. trade paperback edition (also published by Faber), nor the U.S. hardcover published in 1972 by the World Publishing Company. It was a hardcover, and it looked very much like the U.K. hardcovers, but with a pictorial board binding carrying the design of the original dust-jacket, with the "title superimposed over a stylised tree" design from the original hardcover binding moved to the title-page. It may have been a cheaper hardcover edition published concurrently with the trade paperback in 1972; I have no way of knowing at this point, because my copy disappeared sometime between 1985 and 1992. In any case, I have never seen another copy like that pictured or listed for sale.
The way I got that book was like this: my father often went to bookstores when I was a child (he still does, many decades later, as do I) and had the habit, when he was in a particularly good mood, of picking out one book each for myself and my two younger brothers before having his purchases rung up. On this particular occasion, I was probably 9 or 10 years of age, and when he gave me the book, he explained that it might be a bit more difficult than the usual sort of books I read at the time, but that he thought I would find it to be extremely interesting whenever I decided to read it. He was right; it took a year and the best part of another before I decided to read it, but it turned out to be one of the best books I had ever read up to that point.
The book itself is absolutely amazing, although I suspect the scholarly underpinnings of the material were already becoming somewhat dated even at the beginning of the 1980s, and are most likely even more so at this point. The story of languages and how they are related to one another, the invention and spread of various forms of writing, and the influence of both upon societies and cultures throughout history is, obviously, an incredibly fascinating one. When that basic story has added to it the story of corollary developments such as printing (and the consequent rise of literacy), and sketches in also a more-or-less basic outline of how language, and specifically written language, is the sine qua non of our entire modern civilisation, it is an extraordinarily compelling tale that would in all likelihood inspire an irresistible compulsion to learn more about all of the above in nearly any child of comparable age (10 to 12), just as it did for me. Although I have naturally read many more books either specifically about or at least touching on these topics during the ensuing four decades, it was largely from this book, all those years ago, that I gained the basic knowledge of the linguistic families (and how they are related) which enabled me to understand those books when I read them.
If you know a curious and/or bookish child, I would highly recommend getting him or her a copy of this book...
'The Tree of Language', by Helene & Charlton Laird
(Helene Laird & Charlton Grant Laird)
Faber & Faber Ltd.
1960 (or 1966, or 1970)
This edition is a hardcover re-print of the 1957 U.K. First Edition; the above ISBN was first used for the 1970 re-print, but was also applied retroactively to the 1960 & 1966 hardcover re-prints, which of course had no ISBNs when they were published for the simple reason that the ISBN did not yet exist. In this particular case, it is quite likely that either the 1966 or 1970 edition of this book was assigned a number under the British SBN system (established in 1965), a precursor to the ISBN system (established 1970). As the SBN system was used as a basis for the ISBN system, the 9-digit SBN is easily convertible to an ISBN by simply adding a zero to the beginning. Due to this ease of convertibility, the British publishing industry was somewhat slow to change, and the SBN system remained in use within the U.K. until mid-1974, at which point the new ISBN system had been fully implemented.
The copy I owned, read and indeed treasured as a child, however, was not one of the four separate U.K. hardcover editions listed above; nor was it the 1972 U.K. trade paperback edition (also published by Faber), nor the U.S. hardcover published in 1972 by the World Publishing Company. It was a hardcover, and it looked very much like the U.K. hardcovers, but with a pictorial board binding carrying the design of the original dust-jacket, with the "title superimposed over a stylised tree" design from the original hardcover binding moved to the title-page. It may have been a cheaper hardcover edition published concurrently with the trade paperback in 1972; I have no way of knowing at this point, because my copy disappeared sometime between 1985 and 1992. In any case, I have never seen another copy like that pictured or listed for sale.
The way I got that book was like this: my father often went to bookstores when I was a child (he still does, many decades later, as do I) and had the habit, when he was in a particularly good mood, of picking out one book each for myself and my two younger brothers before having his purchases rung up. On this particular occasion, I was probably 9 or 10 years of age, and when he gave me the book, he explained that it might be a bit more difficult than the usual sort of books I read at the time, but that he thought I would find it to be extremely interesting whenever I decided to read it. He was right; it took a year and the best part of another before I decided to read it, but it turned out to be one of the best books I had ever read up to that point.
The book itself is absolutely amazing, although I suspect the scholarly underpinnings of the material were already becoming somewhat dated even at the beginning of the 1980s, and are most likely even more so at this point. The story of languages and how they are related to one another, the invention and spread of various forms of writing, and the influence of both upon societies and cultures throughout history is, obviously, an incredibly fascinating one. When that basic story has added to it the story of corollary developments such as printing (and the consequent rise of literacy), and sketches in also a more-or-less basic outline of how language, and specifically written language, is the sine qua non of our entire modern civilisation, it is an extraordinarily compelling tale that would in all likelihood inspire an irresistible compulsion to learn more about all of the above in nearly any child of comparable age (10 to 12), just as it did for me. Although I have naturally read many more books either specifically about or at least touching on these topics during the ensuing four decades, it was largely from this book, all those years ago, that I gained the basic knowledge of the linguistic families (and how they are related) which enabled me to understand those books when I read them.
If you know a curious and/or bookish child, I would highly recommend getting him or her a copy of this book...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews