Comments for Stella Pierides

Comment on How do languages die out? And why? by Tania

Tania — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:06:56 +0000

Reading this I felt haunted. Haunted by lost words. I once read about the ‘guardians’ of languages, like those who work for Oxford Dictionary or ‘L’academie Francaise’– and have to decide when to ‘kill’ a word and when to ‘give birth’ to another… There is only so much space available for officially accepted words … some words linger on despite the fact that noone uses them anymore and then one day they are executed to make space for a new word…chilling stuff… makes you want to rush out and write a book full of archaic terms just to keep them on life support? Thanks Stella, for some thought-provoking fodder.

Comment on How do languages die out? And why? by Stasha

Stasha — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:52:05 +0000

The story about dying languages is very interesting to me because I got involved here with people who work on Irish and have two PhD students dealing with bilingual Irish/English acquisition. It is actually quite a bad situation with Irish because new research shows that today’s teenagers don’t acquire the language fully, which means their kids won’t speak it at all. People here are reluctant to adopt the Welsh model (which I can understand to some extent) but haven’t come up with anything better, and the clock is ticking faster then they feel it. Maybe this is just a natural way for things to happen, but I can’t help feeling sad whenever a language dies. Each language is beauty in itself, but also it’s not only the language, it is the culture as well. I always wonder whether we can translate everything. Of course, there are clear translations, but there are also these little additional meanings which (I think) one only understands by being part of the culture. I remember reading your book and wondering whether people in England and Germany really know what it means when you describe the taste of baked lemon … There are lots of examples like this.

Comment on News by johe

johe — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:32:42 +0000

I very much look forward to seeing this novel in print. As becomes clear from your Reading Room Blog, the novel will make reference to historical events — reflected in the experiences and life stories of the people who were at the ‘receiving end’ — that not many people in the Central/Western Europe/the USA know about, although they pre-date, and in a sense were ‘models’ for, the ‘population exchanges’ and ‘ethnic cleansings’ that are happening now. These stories must be told and remembered!