Dictionary Days
by Ilan Stavans
At a glance:
- Author: Ilan Stavans
- First Published: 2005
- Type of Work: Essays and memoir
- Genres: Nonfiction
- Subjects: Language or languages, United States or Americans, Twenty-first century, Reading, Mexico or Mexicans, English language, Hebrew language, Encyclopedias or dictionaries
Dictionary Days is best understood in the context of the author’s life history. Born in Mexico of Jewish parents, Ilan Stavans nurtured in his youth a love for Yiddish and Hebrew as well as his native Spanish. Only in his adulthood did he come to appreciate the English language. In his autobiography, On Borrowed Words (2001), Stavans described this polyglot background and reflected on his own linguistic development. In Dictionary Days he places this multilingualism in the context of his great passion for words and his fascination with dictionaries...
(The entire page is 2030 words.)
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