Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing

Tamment has mild autism, synesthesia and a unique relationship to language. For him words don't just hold meaning, but they also ring and shine and sparkle. He prefers his words to harmonise, visually and sonically, and to build sentences with care. Reading him describe his love of words, made me slow down and notice the beauty of his words. His chapters deal with his personal discovery of language, novel ways of teaching language, the history and current state of Esperanto, identity through language in ex colonies, preserving the Icelandic language, sign language, and the collaborative game of conversing on the phone. I was more enchanted with his personal stories at the beginning, and sped through some of the later chapters, but all in all this is a beautiful compendium on language and word tales.