Free eBooks - Language Arts & Disciplines - General

A short manual on the uses of hyphens. more...

A well known story about a famous calligrapher in ancient China retold in simple Mandarin to serve as supplemental reading material for students of the Chinese language. The Chinese text is fully annotated with pinyin and English translation. The link for downloading a pinyin guide is provided. more...

CHINA AND THE CHINESE THE CHINESE LANGUAGE If the Chinese people were to file one by one past a given point, the interesting procession would never come to an end. Before the last man of those living to-day had gone by, another and a new generation would have grown up, and so on for ever and ever. The importance, as a factor in the sum of human affairs, of this vast nation,—of its language, of its ... more...

INTRODUCTORY. During the past two years the present writer has devoted the intervals between official duties to collecting and collating materials for the study of sign language. As the few publications on the general subject, possessing more than historic interest, are meager in details and vague in expression, original investigation has been necessary. The high development of communication by gesture among ... more...

CHAPTER I.  INTRODUCTORY. The Rommany of the Roads.—The Secret of Vagabond Life in England.—Its peculiar and thoroughly hidden Nature.—Gipsy Character and the Causes which formed it.—Moral Results of hungry Marauding.—Gipsy ideas of Religion.  The Scripture story of the Seven Whistlers.—The Baker’s Daughter.—Difficulties of acquiring Rommany.—The ... more...

Since 1876 I have been familiar with the works of Mr. John L. Stephens on the antiquities of Yucatan, and from time to time I have read works on kindred subjects with ever increasing interest and curiosity in regard to the meaning of the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the stones and tablets of Copan, Palenque, and other ruins of Central America. In August, 1880, I determined to see how far the principles which ... more...

Introductory The appended to this volume is (with the exception of the red lines and red lettering upon it) a reproduction of a portion of the map relating to the explorations and surveys of Dr. Strong, Mr. Monckton and Captain Barton, which was published in the Geographical Journal for September, 1908, and the use of which has been kindly permitted me by the Royal Geographical Society. I have eliminated the ... more...

Lau is the name given to the language spoken by the inhabitants of the artificial islets which lie off the northeast coast of Big Malaita, Solomon Islands. The language spoken on the coast from Uru on the northeast to Langalanga, Alite Harbor, on the northwest of Big Malaita, is practically Lau. On the west coast there is considerable admixture of Fiu, which is the language of the bush behind the Langalanga ... more...

I Introductory: Language Defined Speech is so familiar a feature of daily life that we rarely pause to define it. It seems as natural to man as walking, and only less so than breathing. Yet it needs but a moment’s reflection to convince us that this naturalness of speech is but an illusory feeling. The process of acquiring speech is, in sober fact, an utterly different sort of thing from the process of ... more...

CHAPTER I. THE HURON-IROQUOIS NATIONS. At the outset of the sixteenth century, when the five tribes or"nations" of the Iroquois confederacy first became known to Europeanexplorers, they were found occupying the valleys and uplands of northernNew York, in that picturesque and fruitful region which stretcheswestward from the head-waters of the Hudson to the Genesee. The Mohawks,or Caniengas—as they ... more...