Sunday, June 15, 2008

This One's for Adults

"Talking Hands" by Margalit Fox is a fascinating book for anyone interested in linguistics or how our brains work. It's about a Middle Eastern community where the people have developed their own Sign Language because of frequent hereditary deafness. Even the hearing people who live there use that language in addition to their spoken one. 
The book is popular in style and comfortable to read, but it relates the experiences of scientists studying the local Sign Language as well as insights they're gaining about how our brains work to process language. I found it fascinating.

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