by Heather on April 25, 2010
Recommended Read
Wolf, Maryanne. Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. New York: Harper Perennial, 2007. [ISBN-13: 978-0-06-093384-5]
The argument that grounds Proust and the Squid is that the human mind isn’t hardwired for reading the way it is for speech. While the average child left in earshot of others’ speech will quickly and spontaneously learn to speak, a child in arm’s reach of writing can only learn to read after years of laborious tuition and study.
While speaking and listening to speech employ areas of the brain that have become recognized as language centers, reading is much more complex, drawing on the same language centers as well as visual regions, occipital, temporal and parietal areas of the brain.
All these parts are necessary to make sense of images, to dissect heard sounds into their constituent syllables, and to connect all this visual, auditory, and linguistic input with conceptual processing that can decode an author’s meaning. Maryanne Wolf argues that each person who has ever learned to read has had to second already existing and unrelated brain regions in the service of reading. To read we must rewire our minds, and the activity of reading itself changes our neural circuitry. Evidence has already shown that each new skill we learn creates new pathways in the brain, so it makes sense that reading would be no different.
Wolf investigates the reading brain by looking at the earliest systems of writing and tracking how these systems have changed in the past 6000 or so years. She discusses the development of logographic writing, syllabary systems, and alphabets. In each case she considers how these written forms were taught to new readers, how they developed over time, and the different parts of the brain readers mobilize to make sense of each of these writing systems. [click to continue…]
by Heather on January 16, 2010
Recommended Read
Abley, Mark. The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches from the Future of English. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2008. [ISBN-13: 978-0-679-31366-3]
Take a moment to be astonished at how much English has changed in the 600-odd years since Langland wrote Peirs Plowman:
In a somer sesun, whon softe was the sonne, I schop me into a shroud, as I a scheep were; In habite as an hermite unholy of werkes Wente I wyde in this world wondres to here;
Or how about the difference 1000 years can make? Here’s a passage from Beowolf:
Him þa ellenrof andswarode, wlanc Wedera leod, word æfter spræc, heard under helme: “We synt Higelaces beodgeneatas; Beowulf is min nama. Wille ic asecgan sunu Healfdenes…”
It really is amazing how much English has changed. And if you think it’s hard to suss out Langland’s words, think about how much harder it would be for him to understand ours. While his spelling is a little unconventional to our eyes and a couple of his words rather tricky, we can figure out most of what he writes. Consider, though, if Langland tried to make sense of words like sashimi, Hawaii, email, doppelganger, genome, NATO, or pizza.
In The Prodigal Tongue Mark Abley gives us a peek at what the future of English might look like. He explores the ways that English is evolving in Asia, where it’s spoken by a couple of hundred million people and more are learning it every day. He considers the phenomenal rate at which new words enter English from other languages, especially in cosmopolitan cities like L.A. where, according to U.S. census information, 57.8 percent of people speak a language other than English at home. The appetite among young Japanese people for new English expressions is driving rapid and radical change in the Japanese language and gets a chapter of its own. Add to these discussions chapters on how hip-hop, technology, and science fiction are affecting English and you have one of the most interesting books about words that I’ve read in the past year. I highly recommend checking this one out.
The argument that grounds Proust and the Squid is that the human mind isn’t hardwired for reading the way it is for speech. While the average child left in earshot of others’ speech will quickly and spontaneously learn to speak, a child in arm’s reach of writing can only learn to read after years of laborious tuition and study.
