Fading Memories

Marc van Oostendorp

Not so long ago I hacked languages instead of painting applications, and I cannot, in fact, promise that I'll never hack languages again. And not programming languages, but human languages. I've invented quite a few languages for my invented world, the setting of two novels that I'm trying to sell. I've had the languages bug since I first discovered that our school grammar of French wasn't all that well laid out and could be improved upon. Later I learned about Tolkien, about Roland Tweehuysen (but not Mark Okrand -- I never was a trekkie). I joined a club of people interested in designed imaginary countries, world and languages.

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I usually love the language courses from the Teach Yourself series: I must have more than twenty of the little blue, black or yellow books. But Biblical Hebrew is a bad egg. Originally published in 1955, and written in a style that was dated in 1890, H&S had no business reprinting the text photographically in 1991.

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It was reading the afterword in De Psalmen that made me order this book through inter-library loan. Of course, like a fool, I started with Volume I, which is not about the psalms; I should have ordered Volume III (which is what you get when you click the buy this link; books like this are hard to get through Amazon, and the scholarly booksellers that do have a web presense don't have a search function.). Still, I'm very glad I've dipped in this book.

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