David Crystal's Blog, page 11

On on and on at

A correspondent writes to ask if he can say both 'Open your book on page...' and 'Open your book at page...' Is there a difference?Prepositions can reflect personal perspective, if a situation allows it. A book is such a situation. It's both a physical object and a collection of content. Traditionally, the 'at' usage offers us the physical perspective. I left my bookmark at page 60.How far have you read? I'm at page 60.It's the usual use of 'at' to refer to location. The 'on' usage reflects content: He makes an interesting point on page 60.You'll find the answer on page 60.People are more likely to refer to the content of a book than to its physical character, so we would expect 'on' to be more common.'Opening a book' is an interesting example of overlap between the two perspectives. In one way it's a reference to location - so, 'at'. Most people would open a book 'at' a particular page. But people have a semantic reason for asking someone to open a book at a particular point - so 'on' isn't ruled out. In the first case, they're thinking 'where'; in the second, they're thinking 'what'.But I say, 'traditionally'. While I don't sense any change of usage in 'on' to refer to location, I do sense a change in 'at' with reference to content: The footnote is at page 60 - instead of traditional 'on'You'll find this at Chapter 3 - instead of traditional 'in'Here are some examples from Google:I found the answer at page 8.The earliest written account is at page 833 of...The section dealing with... Darwin's views is at page ...You'll find the answer at section 5...Why? I think it's the influence of the Internet, which has foregrounded the use of 'at' in fresh ways thanks chiefly to the use of @ and hash. The collocation of 'find', 'at', and 'page' is routine there, and is now being increasingly used offline. There are several other contexts in which prepositional usage is overlapping on the Internet. I've just used one. 'On' the Internet? Type 'find people on the Internet' into Google and you get some 3 million hits. Type 'find people in the Internet; and you get 6 million. You'll find this post 'on my blog'? 'in my blog'? 'at my blog'? Usage doesn't seem to have settled down yet.

On on and on at

A correspondent writes to ask if he can say both 'Open your book on page...' and 'Open your book at page...' Is there a difference?

Prepositions can reflect personal perspective, if a situation allows it. A book is such a situation. It's both a physical object and a collection of content. Traditionally, the 'at' usage offers us the physical perspective.

I left my bookmark at page 60.
How far have you read? I'm at page 60.

It's the usual use of 'at' to refer to location. The 'on' usage reflects content:

He makes an interesting point on page 60.
You'll find the answer on page 60.

People are more likely to refer to the content of a book than to its physical character, so we would expect 'on' to be more common.

'Opening a book' is an interesting example of overlap between the two perspectives. In one way it's a reference to location - so, 'at'. Most people would open a book 'at' a particular page. But people have a semantic reason for asking someone to open a book at a particular point - so 'on' isn't ruled out. In the first case, they're thinking 'where'; in the second, they're thinking 'what'.

But I say, 'traditionally'. While I don't sense any change of usage in 'on' to refer to location, I do sense a change in 'at' with reference to content:

The footnote is at page 60 - instead of traditional 'on'
You'll find this at Chapter 3 - instead of traditional 'in'

Here are some examples from Google:

I found the answer at page 8.
The earliest written account is at page 833 of...
The section dealing with... Darwin's views is at page ...
You'll find the answer at section 5...

Why? I think it's the influence of the Internet, which has foregrounded the use of 'at' in fresh ways thanks chiefly to the use of @ and hash. The collocation of 'find', 'at', and 'page' is routine there, and is now being increasingly used offline.

There are several other contexts in which prepositional usage is overlapping on the Internet. I've just used one. 'On' the Internet? Type 'find people on the Internet' into Google and you get some 3 million hits. Type 'find people in the Internet; and you get 6 million. You'll find this post 'on my blog'? 'in my blog'? 'at my blog'? Usage doesn't seem to have settled down yet.

On OP latest

A correspondent writes to ask if there have been further developments in Shakespearean original pronunciation (OP) since I last posted on this topic (November 2010). Yes, in a word.

The Kansas U production of Dream was hugely successful, by all accounts, and a DVD of the event will be available later this year. In the meantime, some information about the production can be found at KU Theatre, and Paul Meier's script of the production is also available.

OP figured prominently in the British Library's 'Evolving English' exhibition, with extracts read in OP from Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern English. The opening of Richard III, read by Ben Crystal, can be heard here. Ben is just back from the University of Nevada at Reno, helping to plan an OP Hamlet later this year.

Incidentally, actors who read my blog will be interested to hear news of Ben's second Passion in Practice workshop coming up in May. The video footage of the first one I found breathtaking. Passion in OP one day, maybe.

Website announcement

For reasons I don't understand, my website has been down since 25 March. I am told that engineers at the web-hosting service Webfusion are working on the problem, whatever it is. In the meantime, the domain-name service 123-Reg has put up a default page, but with no explanation.

On talking to aliens

A correspondent writes to ask what my thoughts are on alien languages. So I suppose I should begin this post with Kaltxi - 'Hello', or 'Greetings', in Na'vi, the language of the humanoids who live on the moon Pandora, explored in the 2009 film Avatar. Na'vi joins a family of invented languages created to add linguistic verisimilitude to science fiction films. Gone are the days when every alien, from Martians to Daleks, gave the impression of being a native speaker of English.

How do you invent an alien language? It isn't as easy as you might think. It's not enough just to take some words from a well-known modern language and twist them a bit. If these beings look really alien, and behave in an alien way, then they should sound alien too - and their writing system, if they have one, should also look alien. So their speech shouldn't remind you of a human language - and especially not a world language like English. On the other hand, one has to be practical. The language mustn't be so different that it can't be learned or pronounced by the human characters with whom the aliens are in contact. So alien language inventors usually base their creation on existing human languages, choosing the less common sounds and combining them in novel ways. The Ewok language in Star Wars, for example, was based on Tibetan; and if you listen carefully to scenes where aliens congregate you'll hear bits of Quechua, Haya, Finnish, and other languages in the babble of conversation.

Film directors have to think about other issues, when creating an alien language. Are the aliens 'good guys'? If so, the director will want the language to sound pleasant to human ears, which will mean using softer sounds (such as m's, l's and r's), as in Na'vi. Are they 'bad guys'? Then a harsher sounding language will be likely, full of sharp-sounding guttural consonants, as in Klingon. That's where linguists come in. The most sophisticated alien languages have been devised by professional linguists - notably Paul Frommer for Na'vi and Marc Okrand for Klingon.

Of course, film directors are also aware that aliens may not use anything remotely like the human system of speaking and writing. Astrolinguists, as they're sometimes called, speculate about the possibilities of cosmic communication. If and when the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence receives evidence of intelligent life, the alien system of communication may be quite unlike anything used by humans on earth. It might use the infra-red scale. It might use musical tones, as in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It might use mathematical symbols, as in Contact. Or consider the range of behaviours used by animals, which include colour-change (as in chameleons), pheromones (as in ants), and dance movements (as in bees). Any of these could be the basis of an alien system. The Wookies of Star Wars sound as if they're growling. Droids such as R2-D2 use a complex system of beeps and whistles.

Alien sounds aren't the only features to be created. There has to be alien vocabulary and alien grammar too. Klingon has the word order Object + Verb + Subject, the reverse of English (though this pattern is found in a few human languages, such as Tamil). Yoda speaks English but with an unusual word order too: 'Your father he is... Strong am I with the Force.' Na'vi has singulars and plural nouns, as all human languages do, but also has special forms for expressing 'two of' a thing and 'three of' a thing, which are possible but uncommon in human languages. And humans would have trouble counting in Huttese (as spoken by Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars), as Hutts have only eight fingers, so their method of counting uses base 8.

Some alien languages have been developed by their authors well beyond the level achieved in the films. Klingon has the greatest following. So'wl' yIchu'. DoS yIbuS. yaSpu' tIHoH. That is: 'Engage the cloaking device! Concentrate on the target! Kill the officers!' These commands are taken from Marc Okrand's Klingon Dictionary (1992), a helpful guide to the official language of the Klingon Empire. The letters are close to English values, apart from the following:

capital D is a d sound with the tongue curled back (a 'retroflex' consonant)
capital S is halfway between s and sh
capital H is the ch sound in loch or Bach
the apostrophe represents a glottal stop

The author apologises for the phonetic approximation. As he rightly says, following notions of best practice in foreign language learning: 'The best way to learn to pronounce Klingon with no trace of a Terran or other accent is to become friends with a group of Klingons and spend a great deal of time socializing with them.'

There are now many works written entirely in t'hIngan Hol' (Klingon). In September 2010, an opera premiered in The Hague written entirely in Klingon: 'u'. Later that year, a Chicago theatre staged a Klingon production of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It told the story of a warrior called SQuja' (Scrooge), who is visited by three ghosts to help him regain his lost honour and save Tiny Tim. As the publicity said: 'Performed in the Original Klingon with English Supertitles, and narrative analysis from The Vulcan Institute of Cultural Anthropology.'

Knowing a good thing when it sees it, and possibly anticipating an alien invasion one day, Google already has one alien interface: go to Google's Language Tools and there in the long list of languages you will find Klingon. I expect Na'vi will join it, one day, as Paul Frommer is continuing to work on the language as earthly interest grows.

Invented languages form quite a large family now. Superman (DC Comics) has Kryptonese. The giants in the Japanese Macross anime series have Zentradi. Of course, if you want to avoid the problem of creating a new language, you can simply invent a universal translation device, such as the Babel Fish of Douglas Adams' A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or use your Tardis to do it for you. Or go in for telepathy, as the Vulcans do in Star Trek or the Ood in Dr Who. Or simply employ a being who speaks all of them, such as C3P0 in Star Wars, who can handle six million languages.

Evidently, alien languages provide linguistics with a new and expanding field of study. What should it be called? Some writers have opted for xenolinguistics, based on xeno-, meaning 'foreign' or 'strange'. Exolinguistics has been suggested too, from exo- meaning 'outside' or 'without'. Either way, it's probably the branch of linguistics with the greatest potential for development if, as they say, we are not alone.

On -ish

A correspondent writes to ask if there are any rules governing the use of -ish in English. He says 'we tend to add it to short adjectives, particularly colours and physical attributes: shortish, tallish, greenish... but googling reveals that we add -ish to just about every adjective under the sun, such as beautifulish, Europeanish, freezingish, exhaustedish...'He's right to draw attention to the monosyllabic character of the adjectives. This is an important factor when it comes to inflections in English. We see it in the comparative and superlative forms too, where the distribution of -er and -est vs more and most correlates strongly with length. We prefer bigger to more big. Adjectives with three syllables or more use the other construction (more interesting, not interestinger). There are just a few exceptions, such as unhappier. Adjectives with two syllables are more difficult to describe: some take the inflection (eg those ending in -y and w, such as happier, narrower), some don't (eg those ending in -ed, such as more worried), and some take both (eg commonest and most common).A similar situation applies in the case of -ish. In the sense of 'somewhat', we find it added to monosyllabic adjectives from Middle English times - colour words such as bluish (1398) and blackish (1486) are among the earliest. Adjectives ending in y and w attract it too: sillyish (1766), narrowish (1823). The usage then extended to other monosyllabic adjectives, such as brightish (1584), coldish (1589), and goodish (1756), and the usage has continued to extend over the centuries. In the early 20th century we find it used for hours of the day or number of years, probably motivated by earlyish and latish - 'See you at about eightish', 'She's thirty-ish'. Note elevenish, forty-five-ish, 1932-ish, and so on, where the root has three or more syllables.This ties in with a second use of -ish, where it's added to nouns in the sense of 'having the character of'. Some, such as childish and churlish, and the nationhood names such as English and Scottish, go back to Old English. Among later arrivals are boyish (1542) and waggish (1600) - the latter a first recorded use in Shakespeare, as is foppish and unbookish. (Shakespeare quite liked the suffix - knavish, dwarfish, thievish, hellish, etc.) Note that most have a derogatory sense. Again, most are monosyllabic, but we do find the occasional longer form, such as babyish, womanish, and outlandish. This trend really took off in the 19th century, when novelists and journalists extended it to proper names. We find Micawberish, Queen Annish, Mark Twainish, and suchlike, as well as some colloquial phrases - 'You look very out-of-townish', 'He has a how-do-you-do-ish manner'.What we're seeing today - and what my correspondent has noted - is the further extension of these patterns in informal contexts to longer adjectives. I can't see any restriction here, other than the stylistic one - they are informal, colloquial, jocular, daring. There's a youtube site called extraordinaryish. But one senses the novelty - as does Google. When I typed it in, to see if it was used (I got 193 hits), it was worried. 'Did you mean extraordinary fish', it asked.

On -ish

A correspondent writes to ask if there are any rules governing the use of -ish in English. He says 'we tend to add it to short adjectives, particularly colours and physical attributes: shortish, tallish, greenish... but googling reveals that we add -ish to just about every adjective under the sun, such as beautifulish, Europeanish, freezingish, exhaustedish...'

He's right to draw attention to the monosyllabic character of the adjectives. This is an important factor when it comes to inflections in English. We see it in the comparative and superlative forms too, where the distribution of -er and -est vs more and most correlates strongly with length. We prefer bigger to more big. Adjectives with three syllables or more use the other construction (more interesting, not interestinger). There are just a few exceptions, such as unhappier. Adjectives with two syllables are more difficult to describe: some take the inflection (eg those ending in -y and w, such as happier, narrower), some don't (eg those ending in -ed, such as more worried), and some take both (eg commonest and most common).

A similar situation applies in the case of -ish. In the sense of 'somewhat', we find it added to monosyllabic adjectives from Middle English times - colour words such as bluish (1398) and blackish (1486) are among the earliest. Adjectives ending in y and w attract it too: sillyish (1766), narrowish (1823). The usage then extended to other monosyllabic adjectives, such as brightish (1584), coldish (1589), and goodish (1756), and the usage has continued to extend over the centuries. In the early 20th century we find it used for hours of the day or number of years, probably motivated by earlyish and latish - 'See you at about eightish', 'She's thirty-ish'. Note elevenish, forty-five-ish, 1932-ish, and so on, where the root has three or more syllables.

This ties in with a second use of -ish, where it's added to nouns in the sense of 'having the character of'. Some, such as childish and churlish, and the nationhood names such as English and Scottish, go back to Old English. Among later arrivals are boyish (1542) and waggish (1600) - the latter a first recorded use in Shakespeare, as is foppish and unbookish. (Shakespeare quite liked the suffix - knavish, dwarfish, thievish, hellish, etc.) Note that most have a derogatory sense. Again, most are monosyllabic, but we do find the occasional longer form, such as babyish, womanish, and outlandish. This trend really took off in the 19th century, when novelists and journalists extended it to proper names. We find Micawberish, Queen Annish, Mark Twainish, and suchlike, as well as some colloquial phrases - 'You look very out-of-townish', 'He has a how-do-you-do-ish manner'.

What we're seeing today - and what my correspondent has noted - is the further extension of these patterns in informal contexts to longer adjectives. I can't see any restriction here, other than the stylistic one - they are informal, colloquial, jocular, daring. There's a youtube site called extraordinaryish. But one senses the novelty - as does Google. When I typed it in, to see if it was used (I got 193 hits), it was worried. 'Did you mean extraordinary fish', it asked.

On talking among(st) yourselves

A correspondent writes from the USA to say he's noticed British English words and phrases increasingly entering public and written discourse. He gives as examples He was sacked instead of He was fired, gone missing, and such slang words as snarky. In particular, he says he's beginning to hear amongst rather than among, and wonders whether there's a difference between British and American English in this respect.

There certainly is. A table in the Quirk Grammar (9.21) shows amongst occurring ten times more frequently in British English, and this is confirmed by later corpus studies. In the huge COCA corpus (Corpus of Contemporary American English) we find 2405 instances of amongst compared with 144,461 instances of among - .01 per cent. This compares with 4449 instances in the British National Corpus compared with 22,385 of among - 20 per cent. On the other hand, those 2405 US instances spread pretty evenly over the past decade, so there's no evidence of any kind of very recent dramatic increase. I'd be interested to hear what US readers of this post think.

In the UK, my impression is that all the -st words are reducing in frequency. They began as a development of an ending attached to the base form: among + an -es genitive. We see that ending still in besides. Then in the 16th century, people evidently felt this was related to the -est superlative form, as gradually we find the -st ending used. We see it also in against, where it's the standard form, and in amidst (vs amid) and whilst (vs while), where usage varies. Fowler thought that these differences might be explained with reference to pronunciation - the -st forms would be used when the following word began with a vowel - but this isn't supported by the large corpus collections. The variation in standard English seems to be primarily stylistically conditioned: some people like the sound of whilst; others hate it. There's also a chronological factor: the -st forms tend to be found in older texts and among older people. And there's a great deal of regional dialect variation too.

The OED makes an interesting point about amongst, suggesting a semantic nuance not found in among: 'generally implying dispersion, intermixture, or shifting position'. So, I walked amongst the crowd would suggest a rather more active moving about than I walked among the crowd. If this is so, then I'd expect to see an increase in the proportion of amongst usages in contexts where these notions are dominant; and a quick dip into Google suggests that this is the case. With among(st) a group the proportion of amongst usage rises to 12.6 per cent; with among(st) the waves it is 45 per cent. With talk among(st) yourselves, the usage actually reverses, with amongst being four times as frequent. If there is a trend in US English to use amongst, semantics may well be an influential factor.

On pronouncing Purcell

A correspondent writes to ask about the pronunciation of two 17th-century names: Henry Purcell and Andrew Marvell. He says: 'In preparatory school I was taught to place the stress on the first syllable of Purcell and the second syllable of Marvell, always assuming that to be correct. However, I frequently hear the former pronounced with the stress on the second syllable and the latter with the stress placed on the first. Was my English instructor correct? And do American and British usage conform or differ? Has the stress shifted historically?'

When establishing an earlier pronunciation, as seen in earlier posts in this blog on the Shakespearean sound system, there are several kinds of evidence to look for - rhymes, puns, metre, spelling, and explicit comments by contemporaries. In the case of Purcell, we find clear evidence of the stress falling on the first syllable from contemporary spellings. Before spelling standardized, the vowel in an unstressed syllable would be spelled in different ways. So when we find such spellings as Pursal, Purcel, Persill, and Pursall in the 17th century, an initial syllable stress is clearly suggested. It is reinforced by the ode John Dryden wrote on the death of his friend, in which the metre requires the stress to be on the first syllable:

Now live secure and linger out your days,
The Gods are pleas'd alone with Purcell's Lays,

The same stress pattern is found in a rhyme in a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, who rhymes Purcell and reversal. That was 1918. So there doesn't seem to have been any historical change.

Nor is this just a British pronunciation, as American dictionaries say the same thing. W Cabell Greet's World Words, compiled in association with the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1948, gives initial-syllable stress for both Purcell and Marvell, but adds, after Purcell, 'As an American family name the last syllable is often accented'. The Random House Dictionary confirms this. It lists three Purcells: Edward Mills (the US physicist), Henry (the composer), and a town in Oklahoma. The first and third, it says, have the stress on the second syllable; for Henry, the stress is on the first. And the very next entry is for the Purcell Mountains in British Columbia and Montana, with, once again, the stress on the second syllable. American intuitions are thus split down the middle, with Henry apparently in the minority, so it's hardly surprising that people assume he is like everyone else.

However, intuitions in Britain are split too. It's never possible to anticipate the crazy ways in which the English like to pronounce their surnames or placenames, as famous cases such as Cholmondley ('chumley') and Happisburgh ('haysbruh') illustrate. So, when we encounter a surname ending in -ell, there's no way of predicting the stress pattern. There are several examples of surnames ending in -ell which have the stress on the second syllable, such as the Irish politician Charles Stewart Parnell. This end-stress is a typical feature of polysyllabic words in Irish English. But even here there are problems, because in Parnell Square the stress usually reverts to the first syllable (a similar alternation to what we find with he's sixteen and sixteen people). And Parnell himself preferred to say his name with the stress on the first syllable.

So we get the result we see in, for example, the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, where we find both pronunciations given, in both British and American English. And because linguistic uncertainty is always contagious, it's not surprising to find other surnames vacillating. No dictionary I've looked at gives any other pronunciation for Marvell than one with the stress on the first syllable, and similarly for the members of the famous Durrell family, but we do hear the alternatives, especially from American speakers, from time to time.

On caring about libraries

Several correspondents have been in touch this week about the library crisis that is currently attracting a great deal of attention - not least yesterday from poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy - and asked for my views. The question is timely, as last Monday I gave a paper to the Friends of Rhosneigr Library, one of the tiny jewels in the library system in the UK, which has been desperately fighting for survival. As this paper might be useful to others in the same position, I reproduce it below. The local references to Rhosneigr (in Anglesey, North Wales) and to Welsh could of course be replaced by correspondingly local references in other areas. The paper can be used in support of the library movement without further permission from me.


Why care about Libraries?

I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with ... L.

It's a library.

L proves to be an interesting letter in English, because it introduces so many words strongly associated with the venture we are launching today: Literature. Language. Living. Loving. Lending. Learning. Leisure. Legacy. And also: Loss. Liquidation. Lament. Lunacy. We can tell the story of our enterprise by exploring the letter L. (We can do it in Welsh too, if you want: Llyfrau (books), Llenyddiaeth (literature), Llythrennedd (literacy), Lloerigrwydd (lunacy).)

Long before I was asked to give this talk, in Chapter 3 of my autobiographical memoir, Just a Phrase I'm Going Through, I had written about one of the magical worlds I experienced as a child: '...the world of reading. I learned to read very quickly and, according to my mother, I was always reading. We couldn't afford much by way of books, but the local library was only two minutes away. I got to know every inch of its children's shelves, and steadily worked my way through them, using my allowance of two books per person per week. ... And then there was the joy of ownership. A book was my book, even if it was due back at the end of the week. The words were mine. I was their master. Years later, when I came across Jean-Paul Sartre's Words (Les Mots), I was delighted and amazed. This was my story, too: "I never scratched the soil or searched for nests; I never looked for plants or threw stones at birds. But books were my birds and my nests, my pets, my stable and my countryside; the library was the world trapped in a mirror. ... Nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple." A temple indeed, but so much more. A library is a refuge, a second home, a leisure centre, a discovery channel, an advice bureau. It is a place where you can sit and draw the shelves around you like a warm cloak. Those who threaten any library service with cutbacks and closures are the most mindless of demons.'

There is, indeed, something that literally takes away our minds when we lose a library. Or put it the other way round: when we gain a library we gain a source of wellbeing. The inscription over the door of the library at the ancient city of Thebes read (in classical Greek): 'The medicine chest of the soul'.

How best to capture the spirit, the ethos, the value of libraries? Over the centuries, people have marvelled at them. It doesn't have to be a huge establishment, such as the National Library. Even the smallest village library captures the magic described so well by the Scots poet Alexander Smith (1830-67): 'I go into my library, and all history unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingered in it, while it vibrated only to the world's first brood of nightingales, and to the laugh of Eve. I see the pyramids building; I hear the shoutings of the armies of Alexander.' And the American political writer Norman Cousins (1915-90) agrees: 'A library ... should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.'

The lauding of libraries crosses centuries and cultures. First and foremost they are seen as repositories of knowledge, windows into history. 'A great library', said Canadian scientist George Mercer Dawson (1849-1901), 'contains the diary of the human race.' And American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) echoes the theme: 'Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a 1000 years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age.' Women too, of course. Emerson's phrasing is of his age, but his sentiment is universal.

The metaphor of a library as a treasure trove is a recurrent figure. Here is British poet and journalist John Alfred Langford (1823-1903): 'The only true equalisers in the world are books; the only treasure-house open to all comers is a library.' And Malcolm Forbes (1919-90), the publisher of Forbes magazine, is in no doubt about the appropriateness of the wealth metaphor: 'The richest person in the world - in fact all the riches in the world - couldn't provide you with anything like the endless, incredible loot available at your local library.' But writers seem almost to be competing to find a metaphor that best captures the function of libraries in society. This is English clergyman William Dyer (1636-1696): 'Libraries are the wardrobes of literature, whence men, properly informed may bring forth something for ornament, much for curiosity, and more for use.' And, 400 years on, this is writer Germaine Greer (1939- ): 'libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy'. For Norman Mailer (1923-2007), a library was 'a sanctuary', for Francis Bacon (1561-1626), 'a shrine', for Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) it transcends life itself: 'I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library'.

I like the reservoir metaphor - a library as a source of knowledge, waiting for us to simply turn on a tap. Like water, libraries are essential to our wellbeing. As the American social reformer Henry Ward Beecher (1813-87) said, 'A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.' It is a means of self-improvement, of advancement. As American historian Arthur Meier Schlesinger (1888-1965) put it: 'Our history has been greatly shaped by people who read their way to opportunity and achievements in public libraries.' Or, as poet and humorist Richard Armour (1906-89) put it in 1954: A library...

Here is where people,
One frequently finds,
Lower their voices
And raise their minds.

And it brings together people from all walks of life. As 'Lady Bird' Johnson (1912-2007), former American first lady, commented: 'Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest.'

Along with these brief observations, we must not forget the longer and more thoughtful recollections. Esther Hautzig (1930-2009), deported to Siberia as a child during World War 2, wrote an account of her time there, called The Endless Steppe (1968). This is what she says:

'There was one place where I forgot the cold, indeed forgot Siberia. That was in the library. There, in that muddy village, was a great institution. Not physically, to be sure, but in every other way imaginable. It was a small log cabin, immaculately attended to with loving care; it was well lighted with oil lamps and it was warm. But best of all, it contained a small but amazing collection from the world's best literature, truly amazing considering the time, the place, and its size. From floor to ceiling it was lined with books - books, books, books. It was there that I was to become acquainted with the works of Dumas, Pasternak's translations of Shakespeare, the novels of Mark Twain, Jack London, and of course the Russians. It was in that log cabin that I escaped from Siberia - either reading there or taking the books home. It was between that library and two extraordinary teachers that I developed a lifelong passion for the great Russian novelists and poets. It was there that I learned to line up patiently for my turn to sit at a table and read, to wait - sometimes months - for a book. It was there that I learned that reading was not only a great delight, but a privilege.'

Let no one forget that. If you want to truly appreciate the value of reading, imagine it being taken away from you. Imagine a Siberia with no library. Or a Rhosneigr.

Of course, we are not the first to ponder the implications of losing a library. Listen to the claim made by American cardinal Terence Cooke (1921-83): 'America's greatness is not only recorded in books, but it is also dependent upon each and every citizen being able to utilize public libraries.' Listen to American astronomer Carl Sagan: 'The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.' Listen to science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov (1920-92): 'I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it. Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.' And in Britain, listen to Victorian critic John Ruskin (1819-1900): 'What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?'

Have you noticed? I've just quoted from a Roman Catholic cardinal, an art critic, a scientist, and a science fiction novelist. All sending out the same message. There can be few subjects like libraries to unite such disparate and distinguished minds. And the reason is clear. Libraries are truly special. As American writer Lawrence Clark Powell (1906-2001) put it: 'To be in a library is one of the purest of all experiences.' The point has long been appreciated here in Wales. In 1916 the Welsh Department of the Board of Education published a booklet, A Nation and its Books. On page 11 we read: 'The future of our people depends largely on our books and on our libraries. No teacher is more helpful or more candid than a book, no friend is a better friend than a good book, no school is so inexpensive as a library. ... Every town should have ... its library... Every village ought to have a library.' And if it already has one, it ought not to lose it.

Once a library is gone, it is gone. It cannot suddenly be resuscitated. As the British politician Augustine Birrell (1850-1933) once said: 'Libraries are not made; they grow.' That takes time. Behind each library, no matter how small, is a history of growth, watered by the professionalism of the library's caretakers and the enthusiasm of its readers. It is not an enterprise that can be measured by numbers. It is quality that counts, not quantity. No political body should fall into the trap of judging the success of a library solely in terms of the number of its visitors. That lone reader in the corner: who knows what personal potential will be realized in the future because of today's library experience? As American poet Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982) said: 'What is more important in a library than anything else - than everything else - is the fact that it exists.' If it exists, it will be used. And French writer Victor Hugo (1802-85) sums it up: 'A library implies an act of faith'.

A century ago, in 1911, a king and queen symbolized that faith. They visited Aberystwyth to lay the foundation stone of the National Library of Wales. In 2011, a future king and queen will come to live nearby. In my poetic imagination, I hear Prince William looking towards Rhosneigr - down on it, even, from his helicopter - and repeating my I Spy rhyme. 'I spy, with my royal eye...' - but will he have to end it with 'nothing beginning with L'? It is a scenario that I trust our political leaders will ensure we will never see. It is time for them too to make an act of faith.