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Pilgrim in the Palace of Words: A Journey Through the 6,000 Languages of Earth
Pilgrim in the Palace of Words is about language, about the words that splash and chatter across our tongues. Some six thousand languages are still spoken on the planet, and author Glenn Dixon – an expert is socio-linguistics and a tireless adventurer – travels to the Earth's four corners to explore the way these languages create and mould societies. As one philosopher said, languages are Houses of Being. After doing graduate work in linguistics, Dixon wanted to visit these houses or "palaces" himself – to stroll along their sidewalks, knock on their doors, and peek in their windows. He wanted to see what they were hiding in their basements ... even if it meant a little bit of trouble. In some cases, a whole lot of trouble! Join him on his adventure as, with wit and humour, he works toward a real understanding of how and why we communicate the way we do in the Global Village.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
About the author
Glenn Dixon
9 books163 followersGlenn Dixon's new novel, The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances, will be published April 7, 2026 (Atria books in the US, HarperCollins in Canada and Australia). It's set in the near future in a Smart House where the appliances (especially a young Roomba vacuum cleaner named Scout) hope to save their elderly Humans from the insidious Grid that runs the City.
His previous novel, "Bootleg Stardust" was published in April 2021 (Simon & Schuster). It is the story of the fictional band Downtown Exit and their disastrous 1974 European Tour where the secrets that each character keep finally emerge in the burning down of hotel rooms, punches on stage and finally the theft of the legendary Rolling Stones Mobile Recording Truck. The soundtrack is available on Spotify.
Glenn Dixon's third book was "Juliet's Answer" (Simon & Schuster, January 2017). As the lone male secretary at the Club di Giulietta in Verona, he answered the real letters to Juliet and he learned something of love, of Shakespeare and of the sun splashed hills of this ancient Italian city.
Publishers Weekly gave his second book, "Tripping the World Fantastic", a starred rating, saying it "succeeds by connecting readers intimately with the souls of music-makers all over the world." From a trip to Bob Marley's grave in Jamaica to sitar lessons on the banks of the Ganges, Dixon tells the story of music and just why it has such a powerful effect on us all. www.tripping-the-world.com
Like a cross between Nick Hornby and Roddy Doyle, Dixon has written stories and articles for the New Yorker, National Geographic, the Globe and Mail and Psychology Today.
His first book was Pilgrim in the Palace of Words: a journey through the 6000 languages of Earth.
He lives and works in Calgary, Canada.
His previous novel, "Bootleg Stardust" was published in April 2021 (Simon & Schuster). It is the story of the fictional band Downtown Exit and their disastrous 1974 European Tour where the secrets that each character keep finally emerge in the burning down of hotel rooms, punches on stage and finally the theft of the legendary Rolling Stones Mobile Recording Truck. The soundtrack is available on Spotify.
Glenn Dixon's third book was "Juliet's Answer" (Simon & Schuster, January 2017). As the lone male secretary at the Club di Giulietta in Verona, he answered the real letters to Juliet and he learned something of love, of Shakespeare and of the sun splashed hills of this ancient Italian city.
Publishers Weekly gave his second book, "Tripping the World Fantastic", a starred rating, saying it "succeeds by connecting readers intimately with the souls of music-makers all over the world." From a trip to Bob Marley's grave in Jamaica to sitar lessons on the banks of the Ganges, Dixon tells the story of music and just why it has such a powerful effect on us all. www.tripping-the-world.com
Like a cross between Nick Hornby and Roddy Doyle, Dixon has written stories and articles for the New Yorker, National Geographic, the Globe and Mail and Psychology Today.
His first book was Pilgrim in the Palace of Words: a journey through the 6000 languages of Earth.
He lives and works in Calgary, Canada.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
April 4, 2013
Travel literature is one of my favorite types of literature and I read a lot of travel narratives and travel books of all kinds. Pilgrim in a Palace of Words stands out as an excellent piece of writing and one of the best travel books I have read. Immensely entertaining and informative it is a delightfully compelling read. Glenn Dixon demonstrates a thorough knowledge of linguistics and of the relationship between language and culture and is a master at artfully weaving sophisticated concepts into the narrative without overwhelming the reader. Some facts were truly fascinating to me such as for instance the relationship between Turkish and Japanese, as well as the notion of future and past in the Aymara language, where the past is in front and the future in the back. The text is full of the most amazing bits of cultural and linguistic gems and the narrative is breezy, witty and wonderfully engaging. I just could not put it down and I was sad when I finished reading it. It is the kind of book which I will read more than once. Meanwhile I can't wait to read another book by this wonderful author. Kudos to Glenn Dixon for a magnificent job!
July 26, 2017
First, after reading this book, I feel like to ask for a one year leave, get good cash and just travel to more than 50 countries or more. That is what Glenn has done to me. Secondly, Glenn has made my learning of language and anthropology something I can read about and enjoy. [Banish those big tomes, somebody!]
And amid all this experience, I found myself struck with particular words, passages, quotes and helpful information.
Here we go:
“Humans, of course, tend to section off their land with borders, guns, and barbed wire. But these are only surface markers. In reality we claim our territory with a much more powerful and ancient tool. We mark our place in the world, and even ourselves, with language.”
“Languages, as one philosopher said, are the Houses of Being. And I wanted to journey to these houses. I wanted to strut up their sidewalks. I wanted to knock on their doors and peek in their windows. I wanted to see what they were hiding in their basements … even if it meant a little bit of trouble.”
ElieWiesel, the writer, survivor of the Holocaust, and Nobel Prize laureate, said: “You don’t go to Jerusalem. You return to it.”
“But Socrates came to a different conclusion. Just as the purpose of a chimney is to draw smoke up and out of a room, the purpose of a human being is to seek knowledge. Through reason, Socrates said, an individual can free himself from the dark cave of the unknown. Through reason we can unravel the mysteries of the world and adventure beyond oracles, gods, and fate.”
“Key gar ney—What to do? What to do?”
“Mokusatsu”
“Sometimes words carry the weight of a bomb”
I’ll leave you with the three obligations of the Inca way. These are the things you must do if you’re to have a pure soul. You must work hard, and this we call yankay. You must love, and this we call munay. Lastly, you must always keep learning. The word for this is yachay.” René studied us intently. “You must always keep learning.”
Of Qoricancha, the Temple of the Sun. It had more than 700 plates of solid gold, each the size of a car door. It also had life-size gold figures, solid-gold altars, and a huge golden sun disc.
In the Aymara language, things are completely reversed. The past, in Aymara, is spoken of as being in front, while the future is thought to be behind. The very word they use to describe the past is nayra, referring to the front. The expression nayra mara — meaning “lastyear” — is literally translated as “front year.”
The Maya also calculated the exact orbit of Venus with an error of only fourteen seconds per year and knew the planet was alternatively the morning and evening “star.”
“This tree,” Mario said, “we call Yaxche, or the World Tree. It stands at the centre of all things. For us, you see, there are five directions.”
“The underworld is the realm of death, but the sky is the place of creation.”
“Bishop Diego de Landa, a conquistador/missionary, publicly burned hundreds, if not thousands, of Mayan books in the central plazas of the Yucatán. It’s said that the population watched and wept as the books, many of them bound in jaguar skins, curled in the flames.”
“A thousand years from now, after our own Long Count, what will visitors make of the shells of our modern skyscrapers? Surely, the suburbs will be gone, all the carefully manicured lawns, the strip malls, and gas stations. But what will the towering steel scaffolds of office buildings and shopping malls really tell future archaeologists about our time on Earth?”
“Words, we have to remember, don’t label things. They label meanings.”
“Very basically, wealth and power for the Haida aren’t determined by how much is acquired in a lifetime. It’s the opposite. Wealth is displayed in how much one is willing to give away.”
“So, though we come from different places, from completely different worlds, we all still pull to the sense of human touch. We all eat and sleep and dream in much the same way. To understand this is to reach the top of the Tower of Babel where nothing like mere words can prevent us from understanding one another.”
And amid all this experience, I found myself struck with particular words, passages, quotes and helpful information.
Here we go:
“Humans, of course, tend to section off their land with borders, guns, and barbed wire. But these are only surface markers. In reality we claim our territory with a much more powerful and ancient tool. We mark our place in the world, and even ourselves, with language.”
“Languages, as one philosopher said, are the Houses of Being. And I wanted to journey to these houses. I wanted to strut up their sidewalks. I wanted to knock on their doors and peek in their windows. I wanted to see what they were hiding in their basements … even if it meant a little bit of trouble.”
ElieWiesel, the writer, survivor of the Holocaust, and Nobel Prize laureate, said: “You don’t go to Jerusalem. You return to it.”
“But Socrates came to a different conclusion. Just as the purpose of a chimney is to draw smoke up and out of a room, the purpose of a human being is to seek knowledge. Through reason, Socrates said, an individual can free himself from the dark cave of the unknown. Through reason we can unravel the mysteries of the world and adventure beyond oracles, gods, and fate.”
“Key gar ney—What to do? What to do?”
“Mokusatsu”
“Sometimes words carry the weight of a bomb”
I’ll leave you with the three obligations of the Inca way. These are the things you must do if you’re to have a pure soul. You must work hard, and this we call yankay. You must love, and this we call munay. Lastly, you must always keep learning. The word for this is yachay.” René studied us intently. “You must always keep learning.”
Of Qoricancha, the Temple of the Sun. It had more than 700 plates of solid gold, each the size of a car door. It also had life-size gold figures, solid-gold altars, and a huge golden sun disc.
In the Aymara language, things are completely reversed. The past, in Aymara, is spoken of as being in front, while the future is thought to be behind. The very word they use to describe the past is nayra, referring to the front. The expression nayra mara — meaning “lastyear” — is literally translated as “front year.”
The Maya also calculated the exact orbit of Venus with an error of only fourteen seconds per year and knew the planet was alternatively the morning and evening “star.”
“This tree,” Mario said, “we call Yaxche, or the World Tree. It stands at the centre of all things. For us, you see, there are five directions.”
“The underworld is the realm of death, but the sky is the place of creation.”
“Bishop Diego de Landa, a conquistador/missionary, publicly burned hundreds, if not thousands, of Mayan books in the central plazas of the Yucatán. It’s said that the population watched and wept as the books, many of them bound in jaguar skins, curled in the flames.”
“A thousand years from now, after our own Long Count, what will visitors make of the shells of our modern skyscrapers? Surely, the suburbs will be gone, all the carefully manicured lawns, the strip malls, and gas stations. But what will the towering steel scaffolds of office buildings and shopping malls really tell future archaeologists about our time on Earth?”
“Words, we have to remember, don’t label things. They label meanings.”
“Very basically, wealth and power for the Haida aren’t determined by how much is acquired in a lifetime. It’s the opposite. Wealth is displayed in how much one is willing to give away.”
“So, though we come from different places, from completely different worlds, we all still pull to the sense of human touch. We all eat and sleep and dream in much the same way. To understand this is to reach the top of the Tower of Babel where nothing like mere words can prevent us from understanding one another.”
June 20, 2013
I feel very disappointed in this book and a little bit cheated. From the title, I expected a more in depth exploration of languages around the world but it's really just a travelogue, albeit a reasonably entertaining one, which has very basic information on sociolinguistics running through it to provide a tenuous link between what is essentially a series of short articles about the author's experiences travelling in various countries, not for the purpose of researching linguistics but just to travel. In fact, sometimes the linguistics theme is almost forgotten. So I got bored, I'm afraid. This has been done so much better by others. As for authors reviewing their own books.............. Are we not supposed to realise it's you?
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July 25, 2011Absolutely incredible book! I've never read anything like this before. Sociolinguistics is a very fascinating field and Dixon explores it well. It took me all over the world, into the areas with the most vibrant cultures and interesting languages. He shares his experiences and inspires the current generation.
November 25, 2011
I've never read anything like this before. Dixon shares his experiences and inspires readers to explore. The world is something that needs to be viewed as a learning ground and Dixon does this well. Very well written and captivating. Thanks again for the autograph Glen.
August 30, 2019
I am overwhelmed by this book. Where do I start to write a review? Dixon traveled from Northern Canada to Tibet to the Amazon. He fought off wild dogs and sharks and blizzards. He slept on decks of boats, in hostels, and in tents everywhere. It was not luxury travel.
And I am overwhelmed by the variety of languages in our world and the variety of cultures related to those languages. Dixon writes of various theories about language and what is innate and what is learned and what is specific to each culture. I can't evaluate what he writes but I can realize how much I don't know and how much there is to learn in this field.
I did a little further reading online about the Amazon tribe he lived with briefly. It makes me realize that a book like this gets outdated quickly as cultures get more assimilated. I wonder what the forest fires in Brazil taking place this month are doing to these tribes.
I read the book using Hoopla, a new experience for me.
And I am overwhelmed by the variety of languages in our world and the variety of cultures related to those languages. Dixon writes of various theories about language and what is innate and what is learned and what is specific to each culture. I can't evaluate what he writes but I can realize how much I don't know and how much there is to learn in this field.
I did a little further reading online about the Amazon tribe he lived with briefly. It makes me realize that a book like this gets outdated quickly as cultures get more assimilated. I wonder what the forest fires in Brazil taking place this month are doing to these tribes.
I read the book using Hoopla, a new experience for me.
March 15, 2022
I really enjoyed the intersection of travel writing and linguistics in this book, as someone who likes both of these things. I read this in two sections, separated by months, but that was okay, because each chapter sort of stood on its own.
One of the reasons I didn’t give this 5 stars is that sometimes Dixon used identical wording to describe something in one chapter as he did in a previous chapter (for example he described “ butterflies as big as my hand” word for word in two different chapters). For a linguist, I would have expected him to use alternative words to describe the same thing. But that was a fairly small irritant in an otherwise enjoyable book.
I didn’t like it as much as Tripping the World Fantastic, but I would still recommend it.
One of the reasons I didn’t give this 5 stars is that sometimes Dixon used identical wording to describe something in one chapter as he did in a previous chapter (for example he described “ butterflies as big as my hand” word for word in two different chapters). For a linguist, I would have expected him to use alternative words to describe the same thing. But that was a fairly small irritant in an otherwise enjoyable book.
I didn’t like it as much as Tripping the World Fantastic, but I would still recommend it.
February 7, 2019
I'm reading this book for a class and I'm glad that it was introduced to me. The book is easy to read and very conversational. Lots of good stuff about travel and language. I've learned alot so far about the world and its cultures. 10/10 reccomend :)
October 1, 2019
Part travelogue, part reflection of the evolution of languages. I don't usually like reading books about other people's travels, so it took me a while to get through this book. I read it sporadically on my phone.
April 15, 2019
So interesting, I am glad that I read this book. What an adventure the author had to write this book, I learned lots of new things.
September 9, 2026
I had expected more about languages. Overall it's a travel book with interesting facts about languages and cultures thrown in. It's an easy read.
May 17, 2014
A non-fiction book on the relationship between languages and the people who speak them. It reads as a travel narrative going all over the world.
I found the descriptions, though absolutely stunning and delightful to read, to be sometimes unnecessary. With them, however the book was a delightful balance of entertaining and informative. A relatively quick read. Would definitely recommend it to anyone with any interest in culture/geography/ancient civilizations/language and linguistics/travel. Would also recommend it to anyone who isn't sure if they are interested in any of those. WOuld also just recommend it to anyone and everyone.
I found the descriptions, though absolutely stunning and delightful to read, to be sometimes unnecessary. With them, however the book was a delightful balance of entertaining and informative. A relatively quick read. Would definitely recommend it to anyone with any interest in culture/geography/ancient civilizations/language and linguistics/travel. Would also recommend it to anyone who isn't sure if they are interested in any of those. WOuld also just recommend it to anyone and everyone.
November 14, 2015
This book exists at the intersection of history and anthropology and travelogue and linguistics and is both extremely readable and makes a real effort to place language in context. It really is a global journey. I didn't get that at first, expecting a more typical book on language, but the more I read the more engrossed I became.
February 28, 2010
loving this. intersecting with so many things going on in my head. so much here.
August 19, 2010
Excellent book. A look at the languages of the world through the lens of adventure travel. Especially loved the bits about Tibet and the deep Amazon.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews