University language students in the UK are apparently an endangered species, with the only rise in numbers coming with students of Spanish and (for reasons I'm not clear about) Portuguese. On a related subject, perhaps some kind soul would like to buy this new book for me. "Did you know," as the New Statesman review says, "that the word 'Semitic', as a family of languages which includes Hebrew, stems from the name Shem, second son of Noah, and was not applied linguistically until 1781? Or that Sumerian, an extinct Semitic language, had a special dialect for use only by women? Or that the clay patties on which these languages were written have survived only because they were baked in the fires started by Alexander the Great's conquering soldiers?" Well, no I didn't. But I'm glad I do now.
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