This book did not disappoint. Having read another one of Tammet's books, I knew I find his voice and writing engaging, and this books focus on language was a lot of fun.

EVERY WORD IS A BIRD WE TEACH TO SING by Daniel Tammet (Born on a Blue Day) is a truly amazing book. I am so impressed by Tammet's writing and, frankly, do not have the words to adequately describe how lyrical this text feels. Tammet, autistic and multi-lingual, clearly loves language in a way that many of us never experience:

"Chord. ... It is a golden word. Gold, white and red. ... And if you retype the words in small letters, reordering them to spell dcorh, and then trim the tops off the tall letters, the d and the h, do you see the anagram acorn?" OR

"One day, intent on my reading, I happened on lollipop and a shock of joy coursed through me. I read it as 1011ipop. One thousand and eleven, divisible by three, was a fittingly round number shape, and I thought it the most beautiful I had yet read: half number and half word."

Sentences like those stretch our brains and give a sense of what it is like to be synesthetic, understanding numbers and words through shapes and colors. EVERY WORD IS A BIRD WE TEACH TO SING received a starred review from Booklist, should work well with AP definition essays and could provide some enthralling prompts for our Senior English electives, especially Creative Writing.

This has much more depth than I was expecting. I enjoyed the narration very much and found the life of a man with high-functioning autism very intriguing. I loved the word analysis, I found the tests and procedures he underwent fascinating. It could get a bit wordy and technical in places but it seems authentic and genuine and not contrived so it worked as a whole.

You don't have to a lover of languages to enjoy Daniel Tammet's Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing, but what a delight it is if you are! Tammet grew up in a working class British family and felt like a perennial outsider. He went to college only in his thirties, after being diagnosed with "high-functioning autistic savant syndrome and synesthesia." From childhood he had a fascination with words, and that interest, along with the lessons learned by being labeled "different" and "unusual" as a child, have made him a populist about words and language:

"Vocabulary is not destiny. Words, regardless of their pedigree, make only as much sense as we choose to give them. We are the teachers, not they. To possess fluency, or "verbal intelligence," is to animate words within our own imagination. Every word is a bird we teach to sing."

Tammet's topics range from Iceland's strict rules to ensure that babies receive proper Icelandic-derived names to the rise and fall of Esperanto. He introduces us to some fascinating languages, including the resurgence of Manx, the original language of residents of the Isle of Man, and the language of phone conversations, codified by two pioneering researchers, and describes his novel approach to teaching English in Lithuania.

The longer I read, the more I enjoyed the rich mix of essays that informs our understanding of the vital drive for human expression.

**Review will be published to blog on 10 Sep 2017 at 10:00AM EST**

I chose this book because:

This book appeals to the linguistic nerd in me. The mention of AI also appeals to the computer science nerd in me. Each of the stories mentioned in the blurb seem really interesting, and I appreciate the variety. Linguistics! is! cool!

Upon reading it:

My favourite essay was the first one, which was “Finding My Voice.” This essay was about Tammet himself. He has high-functioning autistic savant syndrome and synesthesia, and growing up, his language was numeric. Understandably, this numeric language of his childhood made it difficult for him to communicate with his peers, but with his essay, we get a peek into his numeric language and his way of thinking, which I found super fascinating.

The rest of the essays felt more like history lessons and research facts about minority languages, but shared as a narrative, which made it a little more interesting, but the first essay written about his personal experience was still my favourite. Tammet has an innate curiosity for language that’s on another level, and has made me realise that I’m really not as much of a linguistic nerd as I thought, though I wish I was. Or maybe I’m just interested in a different aspect of linguistics. There were aspects of some languages mentioned in the book that had similarities to things I studied in my linguistics courses, so my interest definitely picked up with those connections, but otherwise, I might not have found those parts that interesting. Maybe I’m more interested in going deeply into one language than glossing through main ideas of several, but I can turn to academic papers for that. Maybe I’m an all or nothing kinda gal?

However, when someone writes with as much passion as Tammet does, it’s difficult not to get sucked up into the excitement as well! I do have to say that this isn’t a light read, and having an interest in language yourself would help.

I am fascinated by books like this, which attempt to put a human face on linguistics, that most faceless of sciences. The author writes with true heart and passion about language, and there is much to be learned here, and much to be savored.

Thanks to NetGalley for the free digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. Check out all my book reviews at www.myliterary2cents.blogspot.com

Plot Summary: This is a narrative of the author's life. He is a high functioning autistic with some amazing, although unique, linguistic skills. He starts out telling about his life as a boy and his unique language of numbers. The chapters then go on to describe how he acquired more linguistic ability through travel. He explains series of tests he was put through in order to better understand his unique abilities. He explains numerous word origins that are pretty fascinating. He speaks of translations briefly in one chapter.

Notes about the author/writing style: This writer is obviously very brilliant. This is definitely not a "beach read", but is very interesting. Given the uniqueness of how this author learns, all educators should read at least one book of his.

What I loved about the book: I loved learning about the author's unique "math language". Every word had a number attached to it. That blows my mathematical brain!

What I disliked about the book: There were parts a little too technical and detailed for me.

Who should read this book? Anyone who loves words and learning!

Daniel Tammet’s world is judgment-free. He observes and absorbs. He is fascinated by the tiny, and digs until he finds it. It blooms in his hands, taking on all kinds of attributes. He assigns connections and relationships to ever-smaller units of his observations. He delights in his manufactured cosmos of letters, numbers and colors. But there it ends.

He is an interesting character. In his first public speech, he recited the value of pi. To 22,000 places. From memory. Over a five hour period. His particular flavor of autism has given him great powers. But very little of this book is about him.

Every Word Is A Bird We Teach To Sing is a survey of interpersonal communications. There are chapters on telephone etiquette, the deaf, OuLiPo (fun exercises with words and letters) and various foreign languages. Tammet likes words and he has long chains of them (with translation) that he appreciates for their sound or their spelling or their power. So he is especially appreciative of poetry and its multipurposed words. He cites many snippets of poems, translating when necessary.

But it is just a survey. He draws no conclusions. He does not leverage or even connect. The endless chains of foreign words are totally forgettable. Everything he writes about is covered in far greater depth elsewhere. And it is all much less interesting than his own stories of adapting to society, for example, teaching English to Lithuanian women at the age of 19 - knowing no Lithuanian at all. So the best chapters are the first three – about him. The rest are linked in that he discusses means of interpersonal communication. But don’t ask why, because he doesn’t say. It is not very satisfying.

David Wineberg

Tammet, as a person with high functioning autism, defied conventional expectations and turned the workings of his mind to a field in which he could find great advantage--sociolinguistics. Although primarily a novelist, this is a set of essays in which he engages global language: the onomatopoetic words of Nahua in Mexico, the only Englishman in the French Academy, the Icelandic personal names committee, the challenge of translating the Bible for a Pacific tribe that has never seen milk or honey, the dialects of sign language (and its French roots), attempts to keep the Manx language alive, and teaching business English to Lithuanian women in the 1990s.