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Biting the Wax Tadpole: Confessions of a Language Fanatic
Elizabeth Little
#UB9142
Hardcover, 180 pages; 2007
$21.95
 Members' Price: $18.66
Elizabeth Little's passion for linguistic oddities is contagious. I was fascinated by her discussion of the various ways languages deal with numbers (the Yuki language uses a base-eight system, because they traditionally counted via the spaces between their fingers). And can you believe that, in Iceland, nontraditional names for babies must be approved by the Icelandic Naming Committee? It may tickle you to discover that Sanskrit, often considered a "dead" language, is making a comeback in the village of Mattur in southern India. And the complexities of constructing a verb in Navajo will make your head spin! Biting the Wax Tadpole—the title comes from a literal translation of Chinese symbols used to phonetically represent "Coca- Cola" in the early international marketing days—offers a playful romp through "the quirks, innovations, and implausibilities of the world's languages."
(CH)
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