spoken here

Language is used to express the worldview of its speakers, bur does it also shape and influence it? Are the connotations that a word's meaning carries consciously passed on? Many traditional languages have in common that they are more complicated in their grammar than modern ones. Some prescribe human kinships in great detail and maintain a different vocabulary for each gender to use. Does these aspects have a bearing on the human interrelationships? The author pursues the answers from the elders, language teachers and linguistic experts. Of particular interest to him are languages that structure sentences around verbs rather than nouns, as we are used to. Placing the "action" in the centre of a phrase results in a different perspective on life, he argues, making it more inclusive of the surroundings and reducing the primary role of the self. The Boro language, spoken in northern India, has one-verb expressions that require full sentences when translated into English: "gagrom", for example, means "to search for a thing below the water by trampling" or "mokhrob" - to express anger by a sidelong glance. Mohawk must be one of the most complex languages in its use of verbs. In addition to describing the action "a verb must indicate the agent, recipient and the time of the action". There are other elements to consider too, such as the relationships to be expressed or whether it is one-time or habitual; all these components are represented in a series of pre- and suffixes.

Another aspect of the diversity of language that captivates the author, is the naming of objects, like the three or more distinct names for "blue-tongue lizard" in Wangkajunga, an Australian Aborigine language. Nobody seems to knows how they differ from each other. Abley discusses with a Mohawk elder the meaning of the central concepts of Iroquois law: peace, power and righteousness. All three have complex connotations that for non-speakers require detailed explanations. The last concept, for example, can also mean "beautiful" or "good" as well as "righteousness". This is but one example that underscores a unique worldview of its speakers that is influenced by language. In turn, the speakers' perspective continues to influence the evolving language. Some languages are flexible and adjust, developing terms reflecting modern life. Still, others are helpless in this regard and are overrun by the majority language or the universal language, English, the "Walmart" of communication.

While Abley discusses certain linguistic aspects of the selected languages in some detail, Spoken Here is primarily a human interest story and quite removed from dry technical linguistics. The author describes his travels to interesting places, his meetings with scientists and researchers. He commends their work on recording a local threatened language and marvels with them at the grammatical intricacies of another. His primary interest are the individuals who attempt to save or rekindle their (grand)parents' tongues. He describes their surroundings, their community and profiles them with their aspirations and dreams. Through him, we meet elders who recall a time when their language was alive and well. Most activists feel that their language is a vital part of their identity that is worth saving. Others, often the younger people, feel motivated to pick theirs up, almost like a new hobby.

Will the threatened languages survive? Some will, he argues, and gives Manx, Welsh and Mohawk as examples. Political reasons, the ambition to restore some autonomy from a strong neighbour, play an important part in the efforts to rekindle a local language. He compares language diversity with biological diversity of plants and animals. Both are in danger of being eroded or destroyed. The world will be a poorer place without them.

Abley's account of his encounters make an enjoyable read. His selection of places he visited and languages to explore was to a degree arbitrary and sometimes coincidental, such as the discovery of Boro. He pursued leads from people and from respective studies that intrigued him. At times the reader might lose interest in a particularly detailed description of political events surrounding an endangered language issue. Africa, a continent extremely rich in traditional and threatened local languages, was unfortunately not on his travel routes. Experiences there might well have enriched the author's perspectives and deepened the readers' exposure to the challenges and opportunities of Africa's extraordinary diversity. For anybody interested in finding out more about the diverse world of language, this is a good start. [Friederike Knabe]

This is the source of my disappointment with the book. One of the final chapters of the book is about my language, Welsh. I found the spell that had captivated me up till then was broken. This chapter is marred by minor but distracting inaccuracies that spoil the story for me. The author gets details wrong that cause me to doubt the veracity of all the other romantic tales. For example, his description of Ty Tawe and the people around it is not one that I recognise. ( He even erroneously calls it "Ty Tawr")

In short, I would describe the book as full of excellent yarns by a talented story teller. However, the yarns are as fragile as the languages they describe and can unravel when you know the truth.

Strung out from its African roots, humanity's spread over the planet has led to wide cultural and linguistic diversity. Abley's opening chapter in a remote Australian community reflects both the diversity and longevity of the human diaspora. Australia is home to the longest continuous cultural identity anywhere. European invaders drove Aboriginal society into isolated pockets - such as the Mate Ke community perched on the Timor Sea. There, the imposition of Roman Catholic missionaries and miners of any [or no] faith, have left only a tiny community of speakers of Murrin-Patha.

The Mate-Ke group becomes the model for much of the remainder of the book as Abley travels in various lands to observe the terminal state of many languages and cultures. He was prompted in this by learning of Native Canadian elderly people struggling to impart their languages to children mentally chained to CBC television programming. The book is not a continuously flowing narrative, but transports you from place to place, each with its resident language and society, in rather abrupt fashion. That jumpy format should give the reader pause to consider what Abley is conveying. It is the "isolated enclave" situation set in an incoming tidal flow of language and social change. The inflowing language is too often English and the change is economic and industrial. Even the last-ditch efforts to protect a language in Provencal France is contending against methods imposed by English-speaking nations - uniformity and conformity. And the impact goes far beyond how one shops for groceries or orders up a beer. The pattern is duplicated in the United States, India and Africa.

This book makes an excellent companion to Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel". Where Diamond focussed on the material imposition of European-based cultures on the remainder of the world, Abley shows how the invasion and occupation by these forces is demolishing the last vestiges of ancient cultures. It's not a comforting picture. Some resistance is emerging, sometimes in unexpected places. The people of the Faeroes, that mystic group of islands somewhere north of London, are digging in to protect their ancient, if strangely mixed, language. The isolated oceanic rock of bizarre felines, Isle of Man, is making efforts to keep its form of Gaelic something more than a tourist attraction. And the Welsh are no longer apologising for maintaining a television channel in their native tongue. Abley is a journalist, not a linguist, but his sense of feeling for threatened languages and their speakers would not likely be achieved by any ethnographer. This book should be read by anyone wishing to understand the various facets the expansion of industrialised societies is having on people with no power to resist but that of the spoken word.

It's hard to put a finger on why the book was a bit of a letdown. Abley is scrupulously fair-minded in his reportage, and has clearly done a great deal of research. He's careful not to blindly place language preservationists on a pedestal, and asks some genuinely hard questions. Although here's clearly a champion of these disappearing languages and draws a distinct parallel between biodiversity and linguistic diversity, he doesn't shy from shining the light on the failings or more objectionable sides of preservationists. That said, there are a few shortcomings. One of these is that he never really discusses how this whole issue worked in the past. When the Roman Empire ran amok, did Latin replace indigenous speech? More problematic is his focus on languages developed nations. For example, the spread of Spanish in South America, and English and French in Africa have had profound influences, but ABley sticks to North America, Western Europe, and Australia. Finally, the prose-despite noble efforts to inject humor at times-remains rather dry throughout. Some of the chapters run on and on, and would have benefited from judicious editing.

Still, it's hard to fault a book on such an important topic, and the mix of sociology, travelogue, linguistics, and history is probably the best approach to the topic. Recommended for those with a deep interest in the whole wide world and/or language, others may find it slow going.

What we have hear is an intriguing look at a variety of minority languages and the people who work, sometimes quixotically, to preserve them. The tone ranges from elegiac, as Abley meets one of the last two speakers of an Australian aboriginal language, to bathetic, as what begins as a triumphant story of a nineteenth-century writer single-handedly dragging a language--Provençal--back from the brink of extinction morphs into a tragicomic tale of infighting and ludicrously excessive hero worship. As someone who has always been fascinated by these issues but who has had no formal study in them, I found these and other surveys that Abley undergoes to be fascinating. It's true that the book--by necessity--is perhaps not as wide in scope as it could have been, and some of the chapters did feel a little over-extended: was it really necessary, for instance, to devote so much space to Welsh? Nevertheless, I feel that overall, this book was a horizons-expanding read, and I highly recommend it.

What is to be done? Spoken Here is practically a handbook for me, of things I can try, things I can avoid, in my personal crusade to impress Tayal on the next generation. The author is alert to cant, dogma, and dead-end thinking, so the reader can see the fallacies of certain viewpoints. The writing is fluid and informative. His sympathy to the speakers of these languages makes their plights come alive.

I wish books like this came with a CD. Looking at the word Tayal, did you have any clue that it is pronounced dah-YEN? If I write a Tayal word such as qsnuw or mksingut, does that give you any idea of how to pronounce it? I would love to hear what Yuchi, Wangkajunga, or Mohawk actually sound like (although a friend who has been there told me Welsh sounds like angry geese). I have listened to a couple Australian Aboriginal languages by tracking down their websites, which raises my main ¡V albeit minor - complaint about this book. In the Sources, he tells us things like "see the Web site of the Maori Language Commission" or "All these organizations have web sites." It would have burdened him very little, and given the book completeness, if he had taken the trouble to provide the http addresses for those sites!