by Peter Wells Daniel Everett’s 2008 book Don’t Sleep: There are Snakes tells two stories of loss. First, it tells how the young missionary linguist, who had been trained to analyse languages at the Summer Institute (now SIL), found that the system promulgated by his hero, Noam Chomsky, was unable to cope with many features of the…

by Peter Wells Daniel Everett’s 2008 book, Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes (Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle), threw what seemed to be a pebble into the world of linguistics – but it is a pebble whose ripples have continued to expand. This might be thought surprising, in view of its curious construction. It…

by Peter Wells In Philip Pullman’s 2019 novel The Secret Commonwealth, the hero, Lyra, aged around twenty, suffers an attempted rape. If I say it is the most convincing description of a sexual assault I have ever read, this is not to say much, as I have never been raped, though in my youth I…

by Peter Wells Corporal punishment is a sickening and ugly procedure. Apart from the fact that one person is deliberately hurting another (usually smaller) at close quarters, it is often associated with anger, and even sadism. It is too often administered without reflection, too soon after a perceived offence has been committed. It is humiliating…

by Peter Wells Beliefs tend to cluster in packages. It’s a fair bet that a member of the British Liberal Democrat Party will be an opponent of Brexit, and a supporter of Amnesty International, that doughty advocate of all good things. And one thing the Lib Dems, the EU, and AI have in common is…

by Peter Wells Seventy years ago, according to William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies (Carey, 2009), the future Nobel prizewinner was a middle-aged English teacher in a private boys’ school in Salisbury, UK, and not enjoying it. He had written three novels, none of them published, though some of his poems…

by Peter Wells In 1887 Ludwik Zamenhof, a Polish ophthalmologist and amateur linguist, published in Warsaw a small volume entitled Unua Libro. Its aim was to introduce his newly invented language, in which ‘Unua Libro’ means ‘First Book.’ Zamenhof used the pseudonym ‘Doktor Esperanto’ and the language took its name from this word, which means…

by Peter Wells One of humanity’s greatest problems is that everyone thinks they are right. We are aware, of course, that we might be wrong, because we know that on certain issues we have changed our minds, and therefore must have been wrong at least once.  Nonetheless, at any given moment, we believe that we…

by Peter Wells Jesus is reported to have critiqued the seventh commandment as follows:  You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Mt 5:27-28, New Revised Standard Version). The…

by Peter Wells Let me recommend a New Year resolution, in case you don’t have one yet: Be nicer to people you disagree with. I’ve been moved to make this recommendation by my recent reading of The Guardian, a British centre-left newspaper. It has disappointed me. This is sad, for I agree with the general…

by Peter Wells Christmas is traditionally a time for stories – happy ones, about peace, love and birth. In this essay I’m looking at three Christmas stories, exploring what they tell us about Christmas: the First World War Christmas Truce, The Gift of the Magi (O. Henry), and the Nativity story. Peace: The Christmas Truce The Christmas Truce…

by Peter Wells Well, I’ve looked at David Goodhart’s book (The Road to Somewhere – The New Tribes Shaping British Politics: 2017) and I’m obviously an Anywhere. [All quotes are from the Kindle edition]. “They tend to do well at school [Well, reasonably], then usually move from home to a residential university in their late teens…

by Peter Wells It’s dawned on me, looking at recent (and not so recent) commentary on Shakespeare, that a wedge is being driven between the Bard and the culture in which he lived. Although I haven’t actually heard the following syllogism, it seems to be lurking behind much current criticism: Shakespeare wasn’t stupid; Christianity is…

by Peter Wells “A man has been arrested in connection with the toppling of a statue of slave trader Edward Colston. A bronze memorial to the 17th Century slave merchant was torn down in Bristol during a Black Lives Matter protest on 7 June and was dumped in the harbour” (BBC, 1 July 2020). Here…

by Peter Wells My mother believed that games were good for you. Her faith was unshaken by the occasions when my brothers and I returned from our outdoor games with a grievance between us, or by the times the Monopoly board was overturned in anger during the winter months. She considered that games were a…

by Peter Wells Our classes in the British university where I was teaching Pre-sessional students (mainly Chinese) were cancelled for a Special Event. Instead of their normal lessons on academic English, our students were shepherded off to witness a series of presentations on ‘learning.’ Learning, they were told, was ‘Collaborative,’ ‘Creative,’ and ‘Self-directed,’ and depended…

by Peter Wells Saving endangered languages is an activity the virtue of which seems to be beyond question among Western liberals. Endangered languages, as conventionally identified, are usually spoken by poor and vulnerable people in remote areas of developing countries, so our sympathies are engaged. The least we could do, it seems, to alleviate their misery…