Search results for ""Author James Griffiths""

A New Yorker Best Book of 2022 A Globe & Mail Book of the Year "A stimulating work on the politics of language." LA Review of Books As globalisation continues languages are disappearing faster than ever, leaving our planet’s linguistic diversity leaping towards extinction. The science of how languages are acquired is becoming more advanced and the internet is bringing us new ways of teaching the next generation, however it is increasingly challenging for minority languages to survive in the face of a handful of hegemonic ‘super-tongues’. In Speak Not, James Griffiths reports from the frontlines of the battle to preserve minority languages, from his native Wales, Hawaii and indigenous American nations, to southern China and Hong Kong. He explores the revival of the Welsh language as a blueprint for how to ensure new generations are not robbed of their linguistic heritage, outlines how loss of indigenous languages is the direct result of colonialism and globalisation and examines how technology is both hindering and aiding the fight to prevent linguistic extinction. Introducing readers to compelling characters and examining how indigenous communities are fighting for their languages, Griffiths ultimately explores how languages hang on, what happens when they don’t, and how indigenous tongues can be preserved and brought back from the brink.

Read more less

When Freddie Bulsara arrived in England in 1964, fleeing with his family from a bloody revolution on the streets of his homeland Zanzibar, he already knew that he wanted to be a rock'n'roll star. But before that dream could become a reality, there were three specific people he needed to meet. Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon were the other three components in what became Queen, a band whose name is now writ large in rock legend, but whose members spent their early career mired in legal troubles, critical hostility and financial hardship. In the early 1970s, with their preening singer and arch conceptualiser now renamed Freddie Mercury, the group projected an image that was at once regal, mystical and exotic. Yet behind the black eyeliner and billows of dry ice, Queen were four sharply contrasting individuals whose dogged struggle to win success was every bit as dramatic as the ogre battles and fairy king fantasias that populated their music. Queen in the Seventies is an up-close examination of the band's now critically adored first ten years, the decade when they forged their unique vision, beat off the critics and became, after many epic tantrums and much violent throwing of crockery, champions of the world.

Read more less

A New Yorker Best Book of 2022 A Globe & Mail Book of the Year "A stimulating work on the politics of language." LA Review of Books As globalisation continues languages are disappearing faster than ever, leaving our planet’s linguistic diversity leaping towards extinction. The science of how languages are acquired is becoming more advanced and the internet is bringing us new ways of teaching the next generation, however it is increasingly challenging for minority languages to survive in the face of a handful of hegemonic ‘super-tongues’. In Speak Not, James Griffiths reports from the frontlines of the battle to preserve minority languages, from his native Wales, Hawaii and indigenous American nations, to southern China and Hong Kong. He explores the revival of the Welsh language as a blueprint for how to ensure new generations are not robbed of their linguistic heritage, outlines how loss of indigenous languages is the direct result of colonialism and globalisation and examines how technology is both hindering and aiding the fight to prevent linguistic extinction. Introducing readers to compelling characters and examining how indigenous communities are fighting for their languages, Griffiths ultimately explores how languages hang on, what happens when they don’t, and how indigenous tongues can be preserved and brought back from the brink.

Read more less