A review by cheemeego
Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing: Encounters with the Mysteries and Meanings of Language by Daniel Tammet

4.0

An excellent exploration of one of my favorite things—language. My only qualm with the book is that I wish there was more diversity in it. The author explores sign language, a language made up two hundred years ago by a Dutch man who decided he just wanted to, AI language, etc etc., but I couldn’t help but notice there was a lack of diversity in terms of the groups he explored. It would have been awesome if he shed light on dying Indigenous languages as well as old Celtic ones, and I would have loved if one of the few non-Western languages he visited was done not through the lens of Christian missionaries’ impact on tribal communities. Nothing he included was “problematic” by any means, but throughout the book I was aware that the minority of essays he showcased included POC voices. The author has a wonderful, succinct, lyrical way with words and the ability to pare down vast amounts of information into digestible chunks, so I wish that same degree of love and care was shown to a wider variety of languages.