Abstract
AS an example fertile of the serious misunderstandings that can ariW from lack of a common tongue Mr. Rundle i jflfTtes, among a number of instances, the English padre in the First World War who offered a bK Mftction to some French troops in the words “Qufe Dieu vous blesse”, and the story is characteristic of a book that treats a technical subject in a way that cannot fail to appeal to the non-specialist reader while conveying to him much sound and thoughtful information. The first part of the book sets out the difficulties caused by language differences, which Mr. Rundle summarizes in eight points. In the second part he gives a quantity of statistical and other material on the languages of Europe, and in the third he deals with the various projects for overcoming the difficulties, whether by learning a variety of languages, or agreeing to adopt one existing language, or forming a new, “artificial” language. To each of these suggestions he applies the test of his eight points, and though he offers no final conclusion the ideas he throws out are stimulating and provocative. His suggestion of three simple international languages, based on the division of Europe into three main language groups, Romance, Teutonic and Slav, though put forward almost as an afterthought, is at least as worthy of consideration as some of the other projects which he summarizes, and in passing he has some interesting suggestions to make about the teaching and learning of languages.
Language as a Social and Political Factor in Europe
Stanley
Rundle
By. Pp. 207. (London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1946.) 12s. 6d. net.
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BRUCE, M. Language as a Social and Political Factor in Europe. Nature 158, 325 (1946). https://doi.org/10.1038/158325c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/158325c0