The loom of language

What Hacker News says

1. aix1Dec 2022
   Check out "The Loom of Language: An Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages" by Frederick Bodmer. I'm reading it now and it's quite extraordinary. It seems like a particularly good fit for someone with your linguistic background, especially if you have an interest in learning further Germanic or Romance languages.
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2. tragomaskhalosMay 2022
   In Bodmer's "The Loom of Language", a fabulously arch smorgasbord of linguistic delicacies, his withering analysis of Volapuk concludes that what really did for the language was the decision to use it exclusively in what turned out to be its last international conference. This brought all its flaws and difficulties into sharp relief, whence the schisms began.

   Bodmer is not much kinder towards Esperanto, deeming it inferior to Peano's Latine Sine Flexione ("Latin without inflections"), for which he claims "an educated person can read it quite easily", a statement that reveals as much as any other that he was writing in the '40s. The book is full of little bon mots like this, I'm gutted that I've lost my copy.

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3. olifanteOct 2009
   Frederick Bodmer's "The Loom of Language: An Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages", an oldie but goodie from 1944.

   Douglas Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid".

   Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies".

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