A Mouthful of Air

A Mouthful of Air: Language and Languages, Especially English is a work on the subject of linguistics by Anthony Burgess published in 1992.

Among the topics covered are: the mechanics of linguistic sounds; the development of the English language and its connections with other languages; the making of dictionaries; the importance of slang; the International Phonetic Alphabet; the role of dialect; the best way to learn a foreign language; and a look at specific languages, including Japanese and Malay.