Every word is a bird you teach to sing.

Qhat is verbal intelligence? What does the way we speak reveal about our personality? A reflection on the power of words ... Do words transform reality? How does the translation of the Bible from one language to another and from one country to another reshape a universal story? Will computers ever be able to hold a conversation? How can a language be created? This book is a fascinating journey into the world of languages and of those who speak, invent, or study them. Fifteen chapters combine autobiography with reflections on what language says about us and our humanity .

Daniel Tammet grew up in London in a family of nine children. Autistic asperger, trapped in the solitude of his condition and out of place in a world where he feels like a stranger, he builds a bubble, poetic and reassuring, around numbers and words. In this book, he revisits several episodes in his life and his relationship to words. From Iceland to Kenya, passing through Mexico, Daniel Tammet has travelled around the world to meet astonishing people who each reveal a facet of language: Esperanto, Aztec, sign language, the inhabitants of the Isle of Man who are resurrecting a language that has almost disappeared, or in Paris, under the dome, Sir Michael Edwards, the first Englishman to be elected to the French Academy.

"The silent presence of objects encourages human beings to speak. It doesn't matter that the exchange is naturally one-sided. Children talk to their dolls and stuffed animals all the time. We sometimes hear gardeners encouraging their tulips to bloom. Now, in this highly technological age, more and more of us are talking to our computer screens.

But unlike toys, plants and vehicles, the most advanced computers are beginning to respond. »

After the worldwide success of Je suis né un jour bleu, Embracing the Big Sky and L'Éternité in one hour, Daniel Tammet's new bestseller!