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Native Tongues
This book is a unique storehouse of surprising, thought provoking, fascinating and useful facts about human speech and the written word.
340 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1982
7 people are currently reading
179 people want to read
About the author
Charles Berlitz
102 books72 followersBorn in NYC, Berlitz was the grandson of Maximilien Berlitz, who founded the Berlitz Language Schools. As a child, Charles was raised in a household in which (by father's orders) every relative & servant spoke to Charles in a different language. He reached adolescence speaking eight languages fluently. In adulthood, he recalled having had the delusion that every human spoke a different language, & wondering why he didn't have his own like everyone else. His father spoke to him in German, his grandfather in Russian, his nanny in Spanish.
He began working for the family's Berlitz School of Languages, during college breaks. The publishing house, of which he was vice president, sold, among other things, tourist phrase books & pocket dictionaries, several of which he authored. He also played a key role in developing record & tape language courses. He left the company in the late 1960s, not long after he sold the company to publishing firm Crowell, Collier & Macmillan. He graduated magna cum laude from Yale Univ.
Berlitz was a writer on anomalous phenomena. He wrote a number of books on Atlantis. In his book The Mystery of Atlantis, he used evidence from geophysics, psychic studies, classical literature, tribal lore, archeology & mysteries & concluded that Atlantis was real. Berlitz also attempted to link the Bermuda Triangle to Atlantis. He claimed to have located Atlantis undersea in the area of the Bermuda Triangle. He was also an ancient astronaut proponent who believed that extraterrestrials had visited earth.
Berlitz spent 13 years on active duty in the US Army, mostly in intelligence. In 1950, he married Valerie Seary, with whom he had a daughter, Lynn. He died in 2003 at the age of 89 at University Hospital in Tamarac, FL.
He began working for the family's Berlitz School of Languages, during college breaks. The publishing house, of which he was vice president, sold, among other things, tourist phrase books & pocket dictionaries, several of which he authored. He also played a key role in developing record & tape language courses. He left the company in the late 1960s, not long after he sold the company to publishing firm Crowell, Collier & Macmillan. He graduated magna cum laude from Yale Univ.
Berlitz was a writer on anomalous phenomena. He wrote a number of books on Atlantis. In his book The Mystery of Atlantis, he used evidence from geophysics, psychic studies, classical literature, tribal lore, archeology & mysteries & concluded that Atlantis was real. Berlitz also attempted to link the Bermuda Triangle to Atlantis. He claimed to have located Atlantis undersea in the area of the Bermuda Triangle. He was also an ancient astronaut proponent who believed that extraterrestrials had visited earth.
Berlitz spent 13 years on active duty in the US Army, mostly in intelligence. In 1950, he married Valerie Seary, with whom he had a daughter, Lynn. He died in 2003 at the age of 89 at University Hospital in Tamarac, FL.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
September 22, 2016
I'm a lover of trivia, and I absolutely loved this book on the idiosyncrasies of various languages. The part I remember most vividly is the one where it is explained how to say "I love you" in various languages. I still remember some:
The ones I loved absolutely were Amharic
and Japanese:
I had no chance to field test these - hard luck! :(
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You know what is the equivalent of "taking coals to Newcastle" in French, according to this book? "Going to Paris with one's own wife"!
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One story from the book which I loved:
An Indian delegate was giving a speech at the UN. He said: "The colonial powers remain firmly entrenched, still holding in their hands their long-standing fallacies." Well, Indian pronunciation is somewhat peculiar, so he pronounced "fallacies" as "phalluses". This brought down the English-speaking section of the assembly.
Je t'aime - French
Ich liebe dich - German
S'agapo - Greek
The ones I loved absolutely were Amharic
Afakrisalehou (pardon me if I goofed up!)
and Japanese:
Watakushi-wa anata-wo aishimasu
I had no chance to field test these - hard luck! :(
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You know what is the equivalent of "taking coals to Newcastle" in French, according to this book? "Going to Paris with one's own wife"!
--------------------------------------
One story from the book which I loved:
An Indian delegate was giving a speech at the UN. He said: "The colonial powers remain firmly entrenched, still holding in their hands their long-standing fallacies." Well, Indian pronunciation is somewhat peculiar, so he pronounced "fallacies" as "phalluses". This brought down the English-speaking section of the assembly.
November 12, 2016
Charles Berlitz is the grandson of the founder of the world famous Berlitz schools of language, and he himself grew up speaking many languages at an early age. He is also the author of such enlightening works as "The Philadelphia Experiment" and "The Bermuda Triangle." Given that strange combination, you would expect that "Native Tongues" would be not your typical work on linguistics, and indeed this is the case.
"Native Tongues" is really a "Ripley's Believe it or Not" about languages. In its various chapters it contains short paragraphs about odd facts regarding languages and language development. This is not at all an academic work. There are not notes or works cited. Everything that Berlitz writes about the language facts that he discusses must simply be taken as given based on the authority of Berlitz himself. And this is problematic. This reviewer is certainly not an expert on language, but I found at least two things that Berlitz said in this work that are probably not true. These facts had to do with the origins of expressions, and of course the origins of expressions are not well documented and therefore are hard to prove. So perhaps it is enough to accept Berlitz' strange explanations rather than try to challenge them with knowledge outside of this book.
Being the author of books on the occult, Berlitz could not help himself in including the same kind of strangeness that inspired his "Bermuda Triangle" and other works. He includes sections on lost civilizations, UFOs and aliens. For those who really are not looking for an insight into the bizarre, these sections are simply silly. Another fault that I found with this book is that it is highly Eurocentric. Certainly Berlitz touches on Asian, African and Native American languages, and the reader who knows nothing about these languages would learn something here. But his treatment of them is miniscule. He spends far more time discussing the European languages, and he spends an enormous amount of time discussing the development of the English language. Perhaps this is to be expected considering that he is writing this book for an English speaking audience.
This is most certainly not the greatest work on languages out there, but for someone who does not have a sophisticated view of linguistics, this work will be entertaining and interesting and worth a read.
"Native Tongues" is really a "Ripley's Believe it or Not" about languages. In its various chapters it contains short paragraphs about odd facts regarding languages and language development. This is not at all an academic work. There are not notes or works cited. Everything that Berlitz writes about the language facts that he discusses must simply be taken as given based on the authority of Berlitz himself. And this is problematic. This reviewer is certainly not an expert on language, but I found at least two things that Berlitz said in this work that are probably not true. These facts had to do with the origins of expressions, and of course the origins of expressions are not well documented and therefore are hard to prove. So perhaps it is enough to accept Berlitz' strange explanations rather than try to challenge them with knowledge outside of this book.
Being the author of books on the occult, Berlitz could not help himself in including the same kind of strangeness that inspired his "Bermuda Triangle" and other works. He includes sections on lost civilizations, UFOs and aliens. For those who really are not looking for an insight into the bizarre, these sections are simply silly. Another fault that I found with this book is that it is highly Eurocentric. Certainly Berlitz touches on Asian, African and Native American languages, and the reader who knows nothing about these languages would learn something here. But his treatment of them is miniscule. He spends far more time discussing the European languages, and he spends an enormous amount of time discussing the development of the English language. Perhaps this is to be expected considering that he is writing this book for an English speaking audience.
This is most certainly not the greatest work on languages out there, but for someone who does not have a sophisticated view of linguistics, this work will be entertaining and interesting and worth a read.
September 17, 2016
Even though this is a bit dated by now, I still enjoyed reading it very much and learnt many new language facts and loved the obscure stories. The way the information is given, never becoming boring no matter how much scientific knowledge is being shown, in small chapters and fragments, allows one to digest a lot of fascinating text easily, which is especially nice for anyone who is reading about world languages for the first time. This is a great book for both language enthusiasts or experts and for anyone just interested or curious.
December 4, 2007
Amusing, but very very inexact book. Many of the stuff claimed should rather be taken with a grain of salt. It's clearly popular "science".
November 15, 2017
An interesting piece of popular linguistics. It reads less like a textbook or essay, and more like a bunch of linguistic tidbits, "fun-facts" and factoids loosely jumbled together. Certain "facts" ought to be cross-examined with other works (both before and since this books publication date, 1982). Decent introduction to languages and linguistics for beginners and non-linguists.
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November 19, 2015I love this book because its full of so much information and it's not overwhelming. It's really enjoyable and funny in some places. I would recommend this for people studying language origins and just kids in school.
February 17, 2008
I am a big fan of language, so really loved the trivial aspects of this book.
April 8, 2008
This book is full of fascinating little blurbs and articles about languages and linguistics. There is plenty of fascinating trivia even for those who have just a minimal interest in the subject.
May 3, 2009
Some interesting facts, but pretty English-centric and no sources cited. Some of the stuff sounds more like urban legends.
July 14, 2014
Really enjoyable, although I am not sure about the veracity of some of the facts and therefore wish there was a bibliography.
January 22, 2016
Fascinating book on how languages spread and develop. The author manages to make the subject interesting, entertaining and informative.
June 4, 2024
This is an engaging and fascinating read for the etymology and philology enthusiast. Filled with thousands of historical facts, both the history of languages and the many roles language has played in history. If you're the kind of person who is grabbed by learning that Rus is derived originally from a word for the Norse who who came to the region around what is now St Petersburg, then this is for you.
October 21, 2017
This is an awesome book of facts. Relevant, funny, sometimes ridiculous facts on language, words, misunderstandings and human development. Highly recommend!
January 18, 2024
As a bathroom reader, this book was very interesting, although some parts are dated.
March 8, 2015
This is a collection of one-paragraph anecdotes about language, loosely collected into themes for the chapters. Since everything except the anecdotes is just filler in most books about language, this keeps things moving.
A couple of my favorites:
In Basque, there are traces of prehistory in the word-roots. The word for ceiling is "roof of the cave" and for knife "stone that cuts." Similarly, to trace out where proto-Indoeuropean came from, they needed to find a spot that had both salmon, and turtles, and beech trees-- because all three are present in the early form of the language.
There are nearly identical symbols in the undeciphered Rongorongo script of Easter Island and the inscriptions found at Mohenjodaro on the exact opposite side of the world and at thousands of years distance in time.
The word "llama" supposedly comes from Spanish people asking "Como se llama?" what is it called? And the natives repeating the last word of the question in confusion. I vaguely remember a similar fact about the word kangaroo.
A couple of my favorites:
In Basque, there are traces of prehistory in the word-roots. The word for ceiling is "roof of the cave" and for knife "stone that cuts." Similarly, to trace out where proto-Indoeuropean came from, they needed to find a spot that had both salmon, and turtles, and beech trees-- because all three are present in the early form of the language.
There are nearly identical symbols in the undeciphered Rongorongo script of Easter Island and the inscriptions found at Mohenjodaro on the exact opposite side of the world and at thousands of years distance in time.
The word "llama" supposedly comes from Spanish people asking "Como se llama?" what is it called? And the natives repeating the last word of the question in confusion. I vaguely remember a similar fact about the word kangaroo.
September 3, 2014
There are 2,796 languages in the world. The author gives snippets from quite a few of them looking at the origins of languages, their relationships to each other, and examples of the written characters.The author also examines how languages evoke.
September 29, 2008
Great book about the history of language, for anyone interested in the evolution of language.
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June 1, 2009Native Tongues by Charles Berlitz (1982)
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January 3, 2010Language
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews