Up for auction "One Language For the World" Mario Andrew Pei Signed Article. This piece is authenticated by Todd Mueller and comes with their Certificate of Authenticity. ES-6376 Mario
Andrew Pei (February
16, 1901 – March 2, 1978) was an Italian-born American linguist and polyglot who
wrote a number of popular books known for their accessibility to readers
without a professional background in linguistics. His book The Story of
Language (1949) was acclaimed for its presentation of technical
linguistics concepts in ways that were entertaining and accessible to a general
audience. Pei was a supporter of uniting humans under one language, and in 1958
published a book entitled One Language For the World and How to Achieve
It and sent a copy to the leader of every nation in existence at the
time. The book argued that the United
Nations should select one language—regardless of whether it was
an existing natural language like English or
a constructed
language like Esperanto—and
require it to be taught as a second language to every schoolchild in the world.
Pei was born in Rome, Italy,
and emigrated to the United States with his mother in order to join his father
in April 1908. By the time that he was out of high school, he spoke not
only English and his native Italian but
also French and had studied Latin as well. Over
the years, he became fluent in several other languages (including Spanish,
Portuguese, Russian, and German) capable of speaking some thirty others, having
become acquainted with the structure of at least one hundred of the world's
languages. In 1923, he began his career teaching languages at City College of New York, and in 1928 he
published his translation of Vittorio Ermete de Fiori's Mussolini: The
Man of Destiny. Pei received a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1937, focusing
on Sanskrit, Old Church Slavonic, and Old French.
That year, he joined the Department of Romance Languages at Columbia
University, becoming a full professor in 1952. In 1941, he published his first
language book, The Italian Language. His facility with languages
was in demand in World War II, and Pei served as a language consultant with two
agencies of the Department of War.[
In this role, he wrote language textbooks, developed language courses, and
wrote language guidebooks. While working as a professor of Romance Philology at
Columbia University, Pei wrote over 50 books, including the best-sellers The
Story of Language (1949) and The Story of English (1952).
His other books included Languages for War and Peace (1943), A
Dictionary of Linguistics (written with Frank Gaynor, 1954), All
About Language (1954), Invitation to Linguistics: A Basic
Introduction to the Science of Language (1965), and Weasel Words:
Saying What You Don't Mean (1978). Pei wrote The America We
Lost: The Concerns of a Conservative (1968), a book advocating individualism and
constitutional literalism. In the book, Pei denounces the income tax as
well as communism and
other forms of collectivism. Pei was also an internationalist and advocated the
introduction of Esperanto into school curricula across the world to supplement
local languages. |