- Home
- Books
- Social Sciences
- Linguistics
Linguistics
BALDWIN, C. W.; William Mackintosh. Dialogos españoles y arábigos en el dialecto de Marruecos,Tangier and London : 1893
First edition of this pocket guide to Moroccan Arabic for Spanish speakers. The dialogues were drawn up by C. E. Baldwin's unnamed wife, who collected them at Mogador (Essaouria), and were then revised by William Mackintosh, field agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in Morocco.
The book opens by warning the reader that "the...Learn More
DOTY, Elihu. Anglo-Chinese Manual with Romanized Colloquial in the Amoy Dialect.Canton : 1853
First edition of this reference for foreign traders and officials, this copy used in house at the British firm Tait and Co., which was established in Amoy (Xiamen) in 1846 and exported tea and other commodities.
Divided into thematic sections, the manual gives words and phrases in English, Chinese, and the romanized colloquial. In its...Learn More
WORLD WAR II IN ASIA. G.S.G.S. Short Glossaries for Use on Foreign Maps [Chinese; Japanese; Malay - Dutch Orthography; Malay - English Orthography; Thai; Romanized Annamese; Persian; Dutch.]London : 1945
A collection of official short-lists of topographical and descriptive terms to assist in the interpretation of Geographical Section, General Staff maps. The glossaries in this group include either provisional or first editions. The longest of the eight guides is that for China.Learn More
McINTOSH, Gilbert. Useful Phrases in the Shanghai Dialect. With Index-Vocabulary and Other Helps.Shanghai : 1934
Later edition of this useful handbook, which was first published in 1906 and frequently revised to incorporate evolutions in Shanghai's everyday spoken language. The text uses a form of romanization adopted by the municipal council in 1899 and includes a section on vocabulary for railways and tramways (adopted for the 1921 fourth edition...Learn More
XU, Shen. Xushi shuowen jiezi ("Explication of Written Characters").Shanghai : 1923
An early 20th-century Shanghai edition of the oldest dictionary of Chinese characters, assembled by the politician and calligrapher Xu Shen (c.58-148) in the first century CE. The characters are divided into 14 chapters by radical and printed in their seal script form. The dictionary also notes variant forms and provides guidance on...Learn More
BREWITT-TAYLOR, C. H. Chats in Chinese. A Translation of the T'an Lun Hsin Pien.Beijing : 1901
First edition, adapting into English a textbook focused on the Beijing dialect. Intended for Western learners, the contents include dialogues from many modern situations, chosen to reflect the Westernization of Chinese commercial life and major cities. Appended to the "chats" are two alphabetized vocabularies, 135 pages in total, employing...Learn More
CHOMSKY, Noam. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.Cambridge : 1965
First edition of the landmark work of generative grammar, the source of the "standard theory" of language acquisition, and among the most influential linguistic texts of the 20th century.Learn More
WAR OFFICE. Short Glossary of Arabic.London : 1947
Rare first and only edition of this Arabic glossary for use on foreign maps, produced by the British War Office. It explains the use of Arabic terms on maps covering territories to the east of the Libyan-Egyptian border, and was part of an extensive series published in the 1940s.
The spelling and transliteration follow the RGS II System...Learn More
SALAH, Said. Spoken Arabic in Saudi Arabia.[al-Khobar : c.1980]
Later enlarged edition of this pocket book for American businessmen in the oil industry, seeking to learn the Saudi Arabian dialect.
The preface begins with the statement that Classical Arabic is difficult, but spoken Arabic is easy, and learning a few polite phrases will go a long way and be appreciated by Saudi colleagues and friends....Learn More
FARHAT, Jabril. Al-ajwiba al-jalīya fi 'l-usūl al-nahwīya.Malta : 1832
First edition of this rare grammar book, printed in the original Arabic movable type of the press of the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS) in Malta. We have traced only one securely-traced copy worldwide; many such early Maltese imprints have not survived at all.
Established in the 1820s, the CMS press published mostly religious...Learn More
DYER BALL, J. How to Write Chinese. Containing General Rules for Writing Chinese, and Particular Directions for Writing the Radicals.Hong Kong : 1905
Second edition, corrected from the first edition of 1888, of this rare primer, which aids the student of written Chinese by breaking characters into their component strokes and radicals.
J. Dyer Ball, a member of the Hong Kong Civil Service and a resident in China for four decades, wrote many works on Chinese language and culture. He also...Learn More
HOPKINS, Lionel Charles - MOULE, Arthur Christopher (his copies). Collection of 47 offprints and articles from the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society and other journals.[Various locations and publishers : 1910-49]
From the library of the British sinologist Arthur Christopher Moule: an expansive collection of scholarly publications by Hopkins, including four with presentation inscriptions and other unmarked presentation copies. The first volume is inscribed by Moule on the front free endpaper, "Articles from the most part from RAS [Royal Asiatic Society]...Learn More
SCARBOROUGH, William. A Collection of Chinese Proverbs.Shanghai : 1875
First edition of this scholarly compilation by a Wesleyan Missionary based in Hankou. The hundreds of sayings are arranged thematically and indexed across over 700 entries, such as "Boasting", "Opium smoking", and "Wine, a dreadful poison".
This copy is from the library of Lieutenant-Colonel Victor S. M. de Guinzbourg (1906-1976), a World...Learn More
GAIRDNER, William Henry Temple. The Metres of Arabic Poetry:Cairo : 1935
First and only edition, and scarce, with only five copies listed on WorldCat, none in the UK. This work is by the renowned missionary and Arabic scholar William Temple Gairdner (1873-1928) and is an example of the output from the study centre he established in 1912.
"The aim of this small handbook being simply to explain and exemplify the...Learn More
WIEGER, L. Chinese Characters: Their Origin, Etymology, History, Classification and Signification.Ho-kien-fu : 1915
First edition, first printing, a scarce complete set of this valuable reference, including information on the older forms of Chinese characters, an incisive introductory sketch, and a 500-page lexicon.
Leon Wieger (1856-1933) joined the Jesuit order in 1881 and was posted to China in 1887, remaining there for the next 50 years. "His study...Learn More
HOPKINS, Lionel. C. The Six Scripts.Amoy : 1881
First edition, a rare Amoy imprint, of this translation of parts of the Liu Shu Gu, an old Chinese text exploring the origins of the Chinese language through bronze inscriptions.
Written by Dai Tong (1200-1285), the Liu Shu Gu (On the Origins of the Six Types of Chinese Characters) also sought to classify characters according to a base set...Learn More
TRITHEMIUS, Johannes. Polygraphie, et universelle escriture cabalistique.Paris : 1561
First edition in French of the earliest printed Western work on ciphers, complete with all 13 volvelles. The translator Gabriel de Collange expanded the original text with an additional chapter demonstrating that Trithemius' tables may easily be converted into cipher wheels and explaining how to use them. A beautiful example of Renaissance book...Learn More
SUMMERS, James. The Rudiments of the Chinese Language,London : 1864
First edition, uncommon complete with the folding table as here. Aged just 25, the author (1828-1891) was appointed Professor of Chinese at King's College, London, where he taught a young Ernest Satow.
Summers's contributions to Chinese and Japanese studies have only been recently appreciated. His publications reached a far wider audience...Learn More
ARAMCO. Pocket Guide to Arabic.Dhahran : 1954
First edition, first printing, untraced in any Middle Eastern libraries. Aramco formed its training department at Dhahran in the early 1950 and appointed the geologist Roy Lebkicher as director. This guide was designed to be used in concert with a phonograph recording of spoken words and phrases.
The sample conversations cover "getting...Learn More
FRENCH REVOLUTION. A Comparative Display of the Different Opinions of the most distinguished British writers on the subject of the French Revolution.London : 1793
First edition of this extensive compilation of British reflections on the revolution in France, which was then on the cusp of the Terror. The compilation gathers material from such writers as Paine, Priestley, Wollstonecraft, and, above all, Edmund Burke.Learn More
