{"id":141416,"date":"2018-05-21T10:00:31","date_gmt":"2018-05-21T14:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/?p=141416"},"modified":"2018-05-21T08:32:05","modified_gmt":"2018-05-21T12:32:05","slug":"michelle-recommends-every-word-is-a-bird-we-teach-to-sing-daniel-tammet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/?p=141416","title":{"rendered":"Michelle Recommends: Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing – Daniel Tammet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"“Is vocabulary destiny? Why do clocks “talk” to the Nahua people of Mexico? Will A.I. researchers ever produce true human-machine dialogue? In this mesmerizing collection of essays, Daniel Tammet answers these and many other questions about the intricacy and profound power of language.<\/p>\n

In Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing<\/i>, Tammet goes back in time to London to explore the numeric language of his autistic childhood; in Iceland, he learns why the name Bl\u00e6r became a court case; in Canada, he meets one of the world’s most accomplished lip readers. He chats with chatbots; contrives an “e”-less essay on lipograms; studies the grammar of the telephone; contemplates the significance of disappearing dialects; and corresponds with native Esperanto speakers – in their mother tongue.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

A joyous romp through the world of words, letters, stories, and meanings,\u00a0Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing<\/i>\u00a0explores the way communication shapes reality. From the art of translation to the lyricism of sign language, these essays display the stunning range of Tammet’s literary and polyglot talents.”<\/p>\n

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I picked up Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing<\/strong><\/a>, turned to the first page, and knew I would not be putting it back down.\u00a0Tammet’s voice is lyrical and affecting; it drew me in from the first, kept me there with him on a journey through several countries and their thriving and reviving languages. If you’re in the mood for a book that will make you look at familiar words in a different, brighter light, search no more. This is it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The world was made up of words. But I thought and felt and sometimes dreamed in a private language of numbers.<\/p>\n

In my mind each number had a shape\u2014complete with color and texture and occasionally motion (a neurological phenomenon that scientists called synesthesia)\u2014and each shape a meaning. The meaning could be pictographic: eighty-nine, for instance, was dark blue, the color of a sky threatening storm; a beaded texture; and a fluttering, whirling, downward motion I understood as “snow” or, more broadly, “winter.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Is vocabulary destiny? Why do clocks “talk” to the Nahua people of Mexico? Will A.I. researchers ever produce true human-machine dialogue? In this mesmerizing collection of essays, Daniel Tammet answers these and many other questions about the intricacy and profound power of language. In Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing, Tammet goes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":141417,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-michelle-recommends","category-non-fiction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Every-Word-is-a-Bird.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6V6sR-AMU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=141416"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141503,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141416\/revisions\/141503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/141417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=141416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=141416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=141416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}