Calendar fans take note: the Linguist's Calendar is not just for linguists

If you like the format of the Common Errors in English Usage daily calendar, you may be interested to know of a new calendar available to accompany Mikael Parkvall's Limits of Language.

The Linguist's Calendar takes a "this date in history" approach to languages and linguistics. And it's for anyone interested in language and history, not just linguists. Today's entry, for example, lets us know that on this day in 1999, the Nepalese Supreme Court ruled the use of minority languages in the country’s administration “non-constitutional and illegal.” The folly, apparently, is global.

You can subscribe to this calendar by e-mail, and as always, we do not collect e-mail addresses to redistribute in any way, and you can manage your own subscription to successfully unsubscribe at any time. (Not that you'll want to!)

Limits of Language: Raising the bar in Amazonian praise

Sure it's bad form for publishers to point to the Amazon reviews for their titles (and besides, what happens, after all, when negative reviews sit next to the positive reviews the publisher is trying to highlight?). And anyway, Amazon claims all rights to those reviews, anyway. So I can't really just reprint what Amazon reviewer David M. Giltinan has to say about Mikael Parkvall's Limits of Language, but perhaps just this snippet would qualify as "fair use":

There are still three shopping weeks until Christmas. Nobody else has reviewed this book. So - if you know anyone with an interest in words or language - buy them a copy. Their puppy-like gratitude will last all year.

OK, then, shoppers--have at it.

Limits of Language - a wealth of information

Swedish linguist, Mikael Parvall, has written a fascinating book about languages for the general public. It is part “Book of Lists,” part “Guinness Book of World Records,” and part "Visual Encyclopedia," and it contains information on over one thousand languages! The subtitle of the book is "almost everything you didn't know you didn't know about language and languages." Parkvall answers questions such as these: Are there native speakers of Klingon? Has there ever been a state with Esperanto as its official language? What is the least useful dictionary ever produced? What is the world's smallest language? Does English have more words than other languages? In what country are people the most polyglot? Can words consist of consonants alone? He answers these questions and many more, providing an illuminating introduction to linguistics that all readers can appreciate and enjoy. Parkvall teaches and does research at Stockholm University, and has authored four other books on linguistics. He has expertise in Pidgin and Creole languages and the historical and geopolitical influences that affected their development.