All names in this Index are by birth-certificate, which may not be the name by which you know them.
At the top left-hand
corner of every screen there is a flat rectangular box with an icon of a
magnifying-glass: your search bar. You may well find it easier to find the
person you are seeking there.
d) The
librarians of Babel
And the whole Earth was of
one language and of one speech. And it
came to pass, as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of
Shinar; and they dwelt there. And each man said to his companion: "Come,
let us bake bricks, and burn them thoroughly." So they had brick for
building, and slime for mortar. And they said: "Come, let us build a city,
and a tower, with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves;
lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole Earth." And YHVH
came down to see the city and the tower which the men had built. And YHVH said:
"Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is
what they begin to do; and now nothing will be withheld from them, which they
purpose to do. "Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, so
that they cannot understand each other's speech." So YHVH
scattered them abroad from there, over the whole face of the Earth; and they
abandoned the building of the city. This is why
the city was named Bavel; because there YHVH confused all the languages of the
Earth; and from there YHVH scattered the people abroad across the whole face of
the Earth.
Genesis 11 2:9
(my translation; for commentary and explanation click here)
THE
LIBRARY AT BABEL
We did not intend to build this library. Our aim
was greater than that. Our aim was to construct the Tower of Babel. But God
intervened. He confused our language, so we could not communicate the plans for
the Tower. A meeting was convened, to discuss what should be done, but none of
us could understand the proposals, and so, by the tacit agreement of silence,
the Tower was abandoned.
Unaware that I was not alone in this endeavour, I
set out to create a perfect language (this is not it), one with which God could
not interfere, one which would restore our powers of communication and thus
enable us to resume the project. It has taken many years, but already there are
several of us who have understood the basic problems. Between us we have
gathered copies of all the books that exist, and have written countless more
ourselves. That is why we built this library, which, as you can see, is so vast
that it will soon reach the very gates of Heaven.
From my collection of minimalist tales “The Captive Bride” – click here to purchase a copy
This page is
therefore dedicated to the dictionnaires, the lexicographers, and all those who
have invented ways of making language, and then of using language to enable
understanding, to make thought articulate, and to share both of these with
others.
Those
who were actual librarians, however, can be found among the historians
Captain Charles Barbier de la Serre (born May
18 1767; died April 22 1841): invented night writing (though he called it
“point-writing”) on Jan 4, and actually he also invented
several other forms of shorthand and various alternate ways of writing, but it
was his inspiring of Louis Braille that got him listed here; his page at the Musée Braille here, his page at the Perkins Institute here
Roland Gérard Barthes (born Nov
12 1915; died March 26 1980):
“he
believed that individual units of meaning (words, for example) should be
understood as parts of a larger system or 'structure'. Barthes' contribution to
this idea lay in literary theory, where he developed an approach for
identifying 'levels of language' in a text: the functions, the actions, and the
narrative.” from here; bio here
before
I continue... if you opened the second Barthes link, you will have noticed that
his name was written alphabetically, as you had expected, but then, to assist
you in pronouncing it, a phonetic version in brackets alongside. The first
known study of phonetics was undertaken by Sanskrit grammarians as early as the
6th century BCE, with the Hindu scholar Pāṇini among the very first (click here]. A man named Daniel
Jones is widely considered the
"father of English Phonetics" (click here], but the French under
Paul Passy were already hard at it (click here); except that Sir
Isaac Pitman was well ahead of them (click here), and there was also
Alexander Melville’s “Visible Speech” (click here), Alexander Graham Bell’s “Universal
Alphabet” is here, serving as a kind
of foretaste for Ludwik Zamenhof’s Esperanto
(click here); and I cannot
resist adding Moshe Le Poncteur... I shall return to all of these as we
progress down the page, and you may also want to see my page on the Alphabet at
TheBibleNet (click here) – because, after
all, are not all alphabets a phonetic system (and ours is also a Phoenetic
system! isn’t that a lovely coincidence) for enabling the writing down of
sounds?
Franz Bopp (born Sept
14 1791; died October 23 1867): and nothing to do with the Hale-Bopp comet: that
was Thomas Bopp, for whom see E,M&C2 ; this Bopp’s bio here, and I am also including a mention
of William Jones, who is listed below, and who came up with the idea of “The
Common Source” while studying Sanskrit; I am assuming that Bopp
must have known this, because he is absolutely Jones’
successor and confirmer; a very detailed bio and explanation of his work here
Louis Braille (born Jan 4
1809; died January 6 1852): Simon-René Braille, Louis’ dad, is also on Jan 4, and in a sense a Tenzing, except that dads helping sons don’t count; the Braille website here (incredibly thorough except for one
absence: there isn’t a Braille version of it, only this)
John Byrom (born February 29 1692; died 26
September 1763): the poet who created
Tweedledum on March 15, but
listed here because he also created an unusual form of shorthand; click here for his book (If I could find one
I would give you a link to a shorthand version of it, but alas I am unable to);
bio here, and some of his poems here and here; and I am
amused to note, in the context of this page, that he turned down the offer of a
position as a professional librarian (click here)
Avram Noam Chomsky: (born Dec 7 1928, so still alive
as I write this); turned out to be a Jewish Jew-hater, which is very sad; his
website here; his Theory of Language Development here; the rejection of his Theory of
Language Development here
Wilhelm Gesenius (born February 3 1786; died October 23 1842): the Bible in word-by-word
explanations on Jan 7; his bio here; his lexicon here; a new wesbite in his name, currently under construction, here; nine mentions of him in
TheBibleNet: use this link and then call up his name on your
own “find” bar
Karl Heinrich Graf: goes
with Wellhausen, Bultmann and Dibelius (all
three are on the reverend writers page) on Oct 10 as the
founders of modern Bible Criticism (click here, or go to my page at
TheBibleNet here); he
published his contribution, “The Historical Books of the Old Testament”, in
1866; but all of it is Christian attempts to deal with the inconvenience of
proper textual study and uphold its own ideology against the evidence
and
pardon my interrupting again, but I know you are wondering why these last two
paragraphs are here, and not, say, among the reverend
writers or the serious scribes? and the
answer is: because these are the folk who are trying to decipher the
obscurities of the ancient languages, the very earliest attempts to outwit the
deity, reading Babylonian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs or the ancient
Chinese rod-alphabet and the Korean pictograms, the Brythonic tree-alphabet...
all of which I shall include as we continue along this page, though several are
already on the page of TheBibleNet (here) to which I directed
you earlier...
Samuel Johnson (born Sept 18
1709; died December 13 1784): dictionaried on April
15 (click here to use it), mentioned on June
13 and 16, quoted on Oct 2, James
Boswell on Oct 29 - his bio here; his
London house here; his wesbiste here; some of his poems here (he uses a form that
many have dismissed as doggerel, but actually, if you read it, this is rather
more Pope than Betjeman)
William Jones (born September 28 1746; died April 27 1794):
“Common source” on Feb 15 and here; his bio here; and see my note to Franz Bopp, above
Helen Adams Keller (born June 27 1880, died June 1 1968): gets
her first word on April 5; graduated June 28; mentioned on Jan 4 and Dec 2
- bio here and here; her birthplace here; and see the section
about her in “A
Journey In Time”
Anne Sullivan, her guide and mentor, is listed below
Pierre Athanase Larousse (born Oct 23 1817;
died January 3 1875): bio here; the dictionary here; the online French
dictionary here; the
now-translingual online dictionary here
Herbert Marshall McLuhan (born July 21 1911;
died December 31 1980): his website here
George Merriam (born January
20 1803; died June 22 1880) and Charles
Merriam (born November 21 1806; died
July 9 1887): turning Webster’s Dictionary into their own on April 21; their story and records here; the dictionary here
Samuel Finley Breese
Morse (born April 27 1791; died April 2 1872): in code on Jan 4;
also mentioned on June 23 ; his bio in javascript here; his Fitzrovia Blue Plaque here; how to write in
Morse code here; Morse the extremely
competent though mostly-portraits painter here
Eliezer Perelman (Eliezer Ben Yehuda) revived Hebrew on his birthdate, Jan 7 (1858; he died on
December 16 1922): mentioned on Jan 11 - bio here, the purely Hebrew dictionary
here, the Hebrew-English
dictionary here
Devora Jonas and Hemda Jonas: sisters, and wives of Eliezer
Perelman, on Jan 7
Peter Mark Roget (born January 18 1779; died Sept 12 1869): click here to describe what
happened that day; there are apparently one hundred and six options, though
this seems to me a remarkable understatement, case of litotes, act of
restraint... bio here; his involvement
with the Royal Society here (he was its
secretary for twenty years and only started the Thesaurus when he retired:
click here
for that)
Anne Sullivan (born April 14 1866; died October 20 1936):
her achievement on April 5 and June 28; and this without the benefit of Braille, who is on Jan
4 – her listing at the Perkins Institute here
Noah Webster (born October 16 1758; died May 28 1843): defined on April 21 (but see also my links on the Merriam listing); an
entire shelf of library guides here; the 1828 dictionary
here; 250th anniversary
at Amherst College here; New York Public
Library Archives
& Manuscripts here; the Merriam-Webster
website here
Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof (Ludoviko
Lazaro in Esperanto): born Dec 15 1859;
died April 14 1917): his bio here; his Retejo here; the meaning of Retejo here
*
There are several other very precise and specific languages, all of a non-verbal kind, which is probably why most schools don’t count them as languages, and therefore don't teach them as languages, though they should:
Mathematics (Euler et
al)
Music
The Periodic Table
Computer languages
such as MS-Dos and Javascript
I shall return to the originators of all of these at some later date.
You can find David Prashker at:
No comments:
Post a Comment