The Babel Message
The Babel Message

Author: Keith Kahn-Harris

Publisher: Icon Books

Published: 2021-11-04

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1785787381

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'Quite simply, and quite ridiculously, one of the funniest and most illuminating books I have ever read. I thought I was obsessive, but Keith Kahn-Harris is playing a very different sport. He really has discovered the whole world in an egg.' Simon Garfield A thrilling journey deep into the heart of language, from a rather unexpected starting point. Keith Kahn-Harris is a man obsessed with something seemingly trivial - the warning message found inside Kinder Surprise eggs: WARNING, read and keep: Toy not suitable for children under 3 years. Small parts might be swallowed or inhaled. On a tiny sheet of paper, this message is translated into dozens of languages - the world boiled down to a multilingual essence. Inspired by this, the author asks: what makes 'a language'? With the help of the international community of language geeks, he shows us what the message looks like in Ancient Sumerian, Zulu, Cornish, Klingon - and many more. Along the way he considers why Hungarian writing looks angry, how to make up your own language, and the meaning of the heavy metal umlaut. Overturning the Babel myth, he argues that the messy diversity of language shouldn't be a source of conflict, but of collective wonder. This is a book about hope, a love letter to language. 'This is a wonderful book. A treasure trove of mind-expanding insights into language and humanity encased in a deliciously quirky, quixotic quest. I loved it. Warning: this will keep you reading.' - Ann Morgan, author of Reading the World: Confessions of a Literary Explorer

The Dogs of Babel
The Dogs of Babel

Author: Carolyn Parkhurst

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2003-06-01

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 0759528063

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A poignant and beautiful debut novel explores a man's quest to unravel the mystery of his wife's death with the help of the only witness -- their Rhodesian ridgeback, Lorelei.

Bible Babel
Bible Babel

Author: Kristin Swenson

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2010-02-02

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 0061728292

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“Kristin Swenson offers a confident, well-paced, well-informed, and accessible guide to Bible basics and biblical literacy.” — Walter Brueggemann, author of An Unsettling God: The Heart of the Hebrew Bible Bible Babel, from author and religious studies professor Kristin Swenson, is a lively, humorous, and very readable introduction to the Bible—what’s in it, where it comes from, and how it is used in our culture today. If you’ve ever wondered about the origin of the Christian fish symbol; the history of the Good Book; how the Bible weighs in on contemporary political issues; or even the biblical source of pop-culture references in WALL-E or Battlestar Galatica, then this is the book for you. Readers of A. J. Jacobs’s Year of Living Biblically and David Plotz’s Good Book will enjoy Bible Babel, a perfect primer for anyone interested in the Bible—secular and believing alike.

Tower of Babel
Tower of Babel

Author: Robert T. Pennock

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2000-02-28

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 0262264056

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Creationists have acquired a more sophisticated intellectual arsenal. This book reveals the insubstantiality of their arguments. Creationism is no longer the simple notion it once was taken to be. Its new advocates have become more sophisticated in how they present their views, speaking of "intelligent design" rather than "creation science" and aiming their arguments against the naturalistic philosophical method that underlies science, proposing to replace it with a "theistic science." The creationism controversy is not just about the status of Darwinian evolution—it is a clash of religious and philosophical worldviews, for a common underlying fear among Creationists is that evolution undermines both the basis of morality as they understand it and the possibility of purpose in life. In Tower of Babel, philosopher Robert T. Pennock compares the views of the new creationists with those of the old and reveals the insubstantiality of their arguments. One of Pennock's major innovations is to turn from biological evolution to the less charged subject of linguistic evolution, which has strong theoretical parallels with biological evolution, both in content and in the sort of evidence scientists use to draw conclusions about origins. Of course, an evolutionary view of language does conflict with the Bible, which says that God created the variety of languages at one time as punishment for the Tower of Babel. Several chapters deal with the work of Phillip Johnson, a highly influential leader of the new Creationists. Against his and other views, Pennock explains how science uses naturalism and discusses the relationship between factual and moral issues in the creationism-evolution controversy. The book also includes a discussion of Darwin's own shift from creationist to evolutionist and an extended argument for keeping private religious beliefs separate from public scientific knowledge.

Babel No More
Babel No More

Author: Michael Erard

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-01-10

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1451628277

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A “fascinating” (The Economist) dive into the world of linguistics that is “part travelogue, part science lesson, part intellectual investigation…an entertaining, informative survey of some of the most fascinating polyglots of our time” (The New York Times Book Review). In Babel No More, Michael Erard, “a monolingual with benefits,” sets out on a quest to meet language superlearners and make sense of their mental powers. On the way he uncovers the secrets of historical figures like the nineteenth-century Italian cardinal Joseph Mezzofanti, who was said to speak seventy-two languages, as well as those of living language-superlearners such as Alexander Arguelles, a modern-day polyglot who knows dozens of languages and shows Erard the tricks of the trade to give him a dark glimpse into the life of obsessive language acquisition. With his ambitious examination of what language is, where it lives in the brain, and the cultural implications of polyglots’ pursuits, Erard explores the upper limits of our ability to learn and use languages and illuminates the intellectual potential in everyone. How do some people escape the curse of Babel—and what might the gods have demanded of them in return?

Creation to Babel
Creation to Babel

Author: Ken Ham

Publisher: New Leaf Publishing Group

Published: 2021-11-15

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1614587892

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It seems we wake each day to a world engulfed in chaos and confusion... a society mired in godlessness and humanism... and families struggling to guide their children in faith. Yet, God gave us the answer... His Holy Word. Begin as He recorded for us to begin, with Genesis. After many years of teaching and speaking on the importance of foundational faith, leading apologetics author Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis has created a clear and powerful study that helps root families and young or struggling believers in biblical truth. He makes it easy to build a vital Genesis-founded worldview in this simple yet profound study that explores the importance and implications of pivotal events, verse by verse, from Creation to Babel. Discover important context to answer relevant faith questions Easy-to-understand exploration of the biblical text The essential guide to laying a faith-foundational view Faith without a strong foundation crumbles in the face of today’s relentless cultural rejections. Christians, young and old, will find the strong foundation they need in the biblical bedrock of Genesis.

Babel
Babel

Author: R F. Kuang

Publisher: Harper Voyager

Published: 2023-09-28

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780008660567

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THE #2 SUNDAY TIMES AND #1 NYT BESTSELLER 'One for Philip Pullman fans' THE TIMES 'This one is an automatic buy' GLAMOUR 'Ambitious, sweeping and epic' EVENING STANDARD 'Razor-sharp' DAILY MAIL 'An ingenious fantasy about empire' GUARDIAN

Tower of Babel
Tower of Babel

Author: Bodie Hodge

Publisher: New Leaf Publishing Group

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 0890517150

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The Tower of Babel: The Cultural History of Our Ancestors reveals our shared ancestry as never before! Many are familiar with the Biblical account of Babel, but after the dispersal, there was a void beyond Biblical history until empires like Rome and Greece arose. Now, discover the truth of these people groups and their civilizations that spread across the earth and trace their roots back to Babel as well as to the sons and grandsons of Noah. Many of today's scholars write off what occurred at the Tower of Babel as mythology and deny that it was a historical event. Beginning with the Biblical accounts, author Bodie Hodge researched ancient texts, critical clues, and rare historic records to help solve the mystery of what became of the failed builders of Babel. For the purpose of defending the Bible, Hodge presents these and other vital historical facts surrounding this much-debated event. Teens and older can use this layman's reference for Biblical classes, ancient history, apologetics training, and to realize their own cultural connection to the Bible.

Babel
Babel

Author: Gaston Dorren

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press

Published: 2018-12-04

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 0802146724

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“Babel is an endlessly interesting book, and you don’t have to have any linguistic training to enjoy it . . . it’s just so much fun to read.” —NPR English is the world language, except that 80 percent of the world doesn’t speak it. Linguist Gaston Dorren calculates that to speak fluently with half of the world’s people in their mother tongues, you’d need to know no fewer than twenty languages. In Babel, he sets out to explore these top twenty world languages, which range from the familiar (French, Spanish) to the surprising (Malay, Javanese, Bengali). Whisking readers along on a delightful journey, he traces how these languages rose to greatness while others fell away, and shows how speakers today handle the foibles of their mother tongues. Whether showcasing tongue-tying phonetics, elegant but complicated writing scripts, or mind-bending quirks of grammar, Babel vividly illustrates that mother tongues are like nations: each has its own customs and beliefs that seem as self-evident to those born into it as they are surprising to outsiders. Babel reveals why modern Turks can’t read books that are a mere 75 years old, what it means in practice for Russian and English to be relatives, and how Japanese developed separate “dialects” for men and women. Dorren also shares his experiences studying Vietnamese in Hanoi, debunks ten myths about Chinese characters, and discovers the region where Swahili became the lingua franca. Witty and utterly fascinating, Babel will change how you look at and listen to the world. “Word nerds of every strain will enjoy this wildly entertaining linguistic study.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Streams of Babel
Streams of Babel

Author: Carol Plum-Ucci

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2010-01-18

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0547575130

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“A story about the threat of bioterrorism as seen through the eyes of the generation that will grow up with it as a reality . . . page-turning intensity.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Bioterrorism has come to a small town in New Jersey. Two residents die of brain aneurysms within twenty-four hours and several teens become ill with a mysterious flu, leading the government to suspect that a terrorist cell has unleashed a deadly biochemical agent. With each glass of water they drink, the people of Trinity Falls are poisoning themselves. A world away in Pakistan, a sixteen-year-old computer genius working as a spy for the U.S. sees an influx of chatter from extremists about a substance they call Red Vinegar that will lead to many deaths. Can he warn the victims before it’s too late? “The teens are the focus here, all excellent character studies drawn adeptly with few words. The swift pace grabs the reader right from the start . . . Plum-Ucci takes the incredible and makes it all too believable.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A compelling tale of bioterror . . . a tautly paced thriller that will force readers to think about the complexities of living in a post-9/11 world.”—School Library Journal “A page-turner . . . Plum-Ucci has also fleshed out a basic panic-inducing scenario into a thriller more thoughtful than most.”—Booklist