The Loom of Language: An Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages

By Frederick Bodmer

Categories: Education & Teaching, Reference

The Loom of Language (Norton, first published 1944) is Swiss philologist Frederick Bodmer's guide to learning foreign languages by understanding how they are related, edited by Lancelot Hogben. Bodmer explains how alphabets and grammar developed and compares the Germanic languages, including English, German, Dutch and the Scandinavian tongues, with the Romance languages, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. He shows how shared roots and regular sound changes let readers learn several together, supplies basic vocabulary lists and ends with a discussion of artificial languages.

Recommended by 1 person

• Tim Ferriss: “There's one, it's a bit dense; there are some things to be taken from it called the Loom of Language. This is a very thick book. It's in English and it might be worth looking at.”