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Chargement... Dictionary Days (2005)par Ilan Stavans
   Aucun Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. 1   prosfilaes | Feb 9, 2010 |  aucune critique | ajouter une critique
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The whole ofThe Catcher in the Rye is in theOxford English Dictionary, waiting to beunscrambled, and so are all the novels of our past, present, and immediate future en·thu·si·ast Function: noun : a person filled with enthusiasm : as a: one who is ardently attached to a cause, object, or pursuit b: one who tends to become ardently absorbed in an interest A dictionary, despite its heroic effort to pin down language, is destined for failure the moment a single word is printed; language, with its eternal mutations, is forever uncontainable. InDictionary Days, award-winning essayist Ilan Stavans explores our very human need to "seize upon the meaning of a word." Owner of hundreds of dictionaries, he follows a fascinating, zigzagging history of lexicography across many languages, including English, French, Spanish, German, Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and Cyrillic. Throughout his journey, Stavans spots strange meaning inconsistencies, uncovers unusual origins, and shares extraordinary and often hilarious anecdotes. With a dazzling knowledge of dictionaries through the ages, matched by a lively wit, Stavans reaches far beyond the margin of the page and pays a worthy tribute to a discipline that is at once inspiring and maddening. "For dictionaries are oracles: nothing is outside them--except the impossible." Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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 Google Books — Chargement...GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)413.028Language Linguistics Dictionaries LexicographyClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne: (3.08)
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As for dictionaries and language in general, there's a lot of meandering about the subject, including vague touching on the subject of obscenity (or even just the phrase "sexual intercourse") in dictionaries and multilingual definitions of love. It's interesting, but not solid. Given that he's the author of a dictionary of Spanglish, I would have thought he could have devoted one good section to the subject.
A couple errors did annoy me, and make me wonder what else might be found, though there was little enough to be concretely wrong about. The creation of Esperanto was described as mathematical, a term better used to describe Interlingua and friends which had mechanical aspects to their creation. (It is a big deal to some Esperantists, as the one of the values of Esperanto is the hand-crafted artistry that was put into it.) Another implied that the Normans had a hand in the language of Beowulf which predates them (and tosses in the Celts in the short list of influences on English, despite Celtic having a best a minor influence on the language.)
I'm sure that there's other, essay-loving people who would enjoy this book. It's well-enough written, if you don't mind the fact that it doesn't have a topic and is largely a stepping stone for the author to talk about his life and whatever else comes to mind. (