This issue of Exploratorium Magazine is devoted to languages as a systematic means of getting across ideas. Contents include: (1) "Where Do Languages Come From" (Merrit Ruhlen); (2) "English in Transition" (Rupert Peene); (3) "The Making of English" (Judith Brand); (4) "Try This!"-Become a Word Historian and One Poem-Three Poems" (Kurt…

This handbook is directed toward those who have to deal with spoken mathematics, yet have insufficient background to know the correct verbal expression for the written symbolic one. It compiles consistent and well-defined ways of uttering mathematical expressions so listeners will receive clear, unambiguous, and well-pronounced representations.…

A discussion of American Sign Language looks at its history in the context of deaf education and its increasing acceptance as a complete natural language both among linguists and in the college curriculum. (MSE)

Discusses how linguists determine relationships of languages and group them into a family. Presents a crossword puzzle as a student activity, suitable for science and other classes, to determine the Indo-European roots of English words by a comparative method. (SK)

A language typology based on common errors made in pronunciation of English by speakers of other languages is presented and discussed. The classification system was developed from the concept of interlanguage, the intermediate step between a language learner's native and target languages, and the notion that interference in learning a new language…