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A review by anne978
Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing: Encounters with the Mysteries and Meanings of Language by Daniel Tammet
I am strangely receptive to alluring book titles. Some books are named so brilliantly that the title alone is enough to make me yearn to read it, no matter what the topic. A few of my favourite titles are Far From the Madding Crowd, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Living to Tell the Tale, In Search of Lost Time, Grief Is the Thing With Feathers, The Cider House Rules, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler.
A new favourite title is Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing. It is beautifully visual, and after finishing this book I could see why this title was chosen - it seems to reflect Tammet's way of looking at the world of language.
Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing is a very interesting mix of different subtopics within the field of language. I had expected a more educational book, but Tammet's setup is more personal than that. Every chapter is based on a place he visited, people he met, experiences he had, or simply experts he questioned about a topic of his interest. For instance, there is a chapter on Tammet's TEFL experience in Lithuania, one with his meeting with a native speaker of Nahuatl and one on sign language. I would say that Tammet is more interested in venturing into unexplored areas of language, rather than focussing on conveying as many facts as possible. This may disappoint one reader and delight the other - I was leaning toward the latter.
I liked the wide range of topics and seeing his personal input: Tammet often just describes being intrigued by something and then arranging a meeting with someone. Every page shows how much he enjoys language and the chapter on OuLiPo clearly shows his love for playing with language. I didn't learn a lot of facts per se, but after reading it I feel like I have been introduced to a lot of different ways of thinking about and using language, and that in itself makes Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing inspiring and worth a read.
A new favourite title is Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing. It is beautifully visual, and after finishing this book I could see why this title was chosen - it seems to reflect Tammet's way of looking at the world of language.
Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing is a very interesting mix of different subtopics within the field of language. I had expected a more educational book, but Tammet's setup is more personal than that. Every chapter is based on a place he visited, people he met, experiences he had, or simply experts he questioned about a topic of his interest. For instance, there is a chapter on Tammet's TEFL experience in Lithuania, one with his meeting with a native speaker of Nahuatl and one on sign language. I would say that Tammet is more interested in venturing into unexplored areas of language, rather than focussing on conveying as many facts as possible. This may disappoint one reader and delight the other - I was leaning toward the latter.
I liked the wide range of topics and seeing his personal input: Tammet often just describes being intrigued by something and then arranging a meeting with someone. Every page shows how much he enjoys language and the chapter on OuLiPo clearly shows his love for playing with language. I didn't learn a lot of facts per se, but after reading it I feel like I have been introduced to a lot of different ways of thinking about and using language, and that in itself makes Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing inspiring and worth a read.