books about language history

Read. One of the most powerful is when he tries to understand the nature of Russian without learning Russian. This book offers fresh insights into the contested issue of cultural encounter in India’s history. On Language: Chomsky's Classic Works Language and Responsibility and Reflections on Language in One Volume. Read more. Is this fair? There is a broad consensus among scholars that these originated as a single work (the so-called " Deuteronomistic history ") … At the same time, we have a crisis in all the “little guys” in the world’s languages, where we seem to be losing them at a very fast rate – something like two a month. Amazon.com: History of Language (Globalities) (9781861890801): Fischer, Steven Roger: Books What I’m trying to do is to correct that. One of the more significant developments in technology at the moment is machine translation and other electronic means of getting access to what’s going on in languages other than your own. In Le Ton Beau de Marot he is taking patterns you find in language and showing how weird and wonderful they are. First, he wrote a grammar of his own language, which was Spanish. 5 Dictionary of Word Origins: The Histories of More Than 8,000 English-Language Words by John Ayto. He is trying to get an idea of how the finite resources there are in each language can somehow express a vast diversity of meaning. From my attempt to show that the world’s linguistic future may be very diverse, he’s a useful straw man to attack. He also looks at all the variant forms of English too, such as dialects and slang, and at attempts to standardise its general usage. Written around 380 BCE, this text is considered to be one of the most influential pieces ever written. 120. I look at the progress of languages over centuries and millennia – my book Empires of the Word starts in 3000 BC and ends in modern times. You must have a goodreads account to vote. It’s this approach that makes this book so interesting and distinctive. Nigel Warburton, Five Books philosophy editor and author of Thinking from A to Z, selects some of the best books on critical thinking—and explains how they will help us make better informed decisions and construct more valid arguments. That’s the basis of my view of the world. There are a lot of languages around, perhaps 6,000 or 7,000, but if we continue to lose two a month we are going to see about half the world’s languages disappear in the course of a century. The second of his four books, The Secret Life of Words, won the 2008 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and in 2009 he received a Somerset Maugham Award. Translation and the Meaning of Everything, Will's Words: How William Shakespeare Changed the Way You Talk, From Skedaddle to Selfie: Words of the Generations, Sequoyah and His Talking Leaves: A Play about the Cherokee Syllabary, Spell It Out: The Curious, Enthralling and Extraordinary Story of English Spelling, Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends, Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling, There's a Word for It: The Explosion of the American Language Since 1900, 33 Sweeping Multigenerational Family Dramas. The best history books. So often with books about a topic that can take you in all sorts of directions (I’m looking at you etymology), they do just that: takes you in all directions. He conjectures some explanations as to why this should be. One of the things which is changing is the way we are using our languages and, in particular, their involvement with technology. There have been different assaults on the diversity of English at different times. “If we continue to lose two a month we are going to see about half the world’s languages disappear in the course of a century.”. The point of his book is that there is so much more there in literature. by Nicholas Evans We are in danger of losing the sheer variety that we have in humanity, which is a source of cultural wealth. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex The more there is global communication – whether direct or through translation – the more there will be a coming together of the kind of things people are saying in their different languages. Le Ton Beau de Marot There have been many lingua francas and English, although it is the most widespread that we know of, is a relative latecomer. David Nettle is an anthropologist of language. When we are also conscious that in the last century or two that language has spread out all over the world, it gives us a very foreshortened perspective. It’s language history from the point of view of the “little guy”. What he does is go through language in its different general properties as a human phenomenon, trying to work out how the diversity can be modelled as having come about. This book focuses on the history of the oppression of American Sign Language. 1 Read But you don’t really buy into this theory and have argued that new technology might allow minority languages to thrive. Although the publishers say this book is a volume of “Oxford linguistics”, this is like no linguistics that I was ever taught when I was studying for my doctorate in the subject. It’s a complex story and the good thing about David Crystal’s books is that he does justice to this complexity without losing the thread. by Douglas Hofstadter The public status of the language is considered and the role of Welsh is compared with the roles of other of the non-state languages of Europe. You could argue that retaining your own language is some way of putting a break on this process and thus protecting that diversity. Let’s go on to the second book. The very fact that he hasn’t said all that needs to be said only reinforces such points that he has made. I believe, at the last count, you have a working knowledge of 26, This is a rumour! Bryson has written informatively and entertainingly on the home (At Home: A short history of private life), Shakespeare (Shakespeare: The World as a Stage), and, perhaps most famously, science (A Short History Of Nearly Everything), but he started out with this short and very engaging book, one of the most popular recent books on the English language. The third examines how languages are a result of the spread of human beings around the world. Please tell us more about your final pick. Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. In this book, a team of international experts cover the entire recorded history of the English language, outlining its development over fifteen centuries. Crystal draws attention to this black hole that there is in that early part of the history of English, and makes it clear to readers what a paradoxical process has created the English language. Less of an explanation of early German life and language than a lecture-made-into-a-book on the evolution of a handful of words.The book assumes much more familiarity with ancient texts and dialects than the casual armchair historian will have. These technologies are going to become more significant and are already becoming available to people who own handheld devices. He does this through interesting examples. Dying Words The book’s chapters are interspersed by a vast number of different translations – mainly into English – of this one poem, showing the diversity which will come out of attempts to translate it. In 2011, his latest book The Language Wars was published and … 'The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way' by Bill Bryson. I have certainly worked with that number of languages and got interesting things out of them, but living as I do in southwest England, the opportunity to use different languages on a daily basis is fairly limited. The Stories of English The book begins with an essay on ‘culture’ itself, dissecting the historical development and social appropriation of this ubiquitous and far-reaching semantic construct. The book also thinks about how other bigger languages have worked over the centuries and millennia and examines their evolution from the point of view of the small languages. The Republic, Plato. What Nebrija said was that you could do this for any language, and argued that, above all, any language which is the language of an empire ought to have a grammar. Tell us more. “I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.” [TS Eliot, The Waste Land]. does human language differ from non-hominid communica-tion? When it comes to languages, we tend to be familiar only with the one that we use on a daily basis. Each part is structured in a different way. 4.6 out of 5 stars. list created October 29th, 2017 Nicholas Ostler. The fourth looks at language artists and the fifth at the present dangers confronting language diversity. 7 people found this helpful. Experimental fiction often uses unusual forms of syntax, style, or form—perhaps taking the form of fragments, footnotes or parallel narratives. Evans gives you an idea of how the world seems when you speak a very small language and how you interact with lots of other groups who also speak very small languages. Auroux looks at the process of how this development spread across Europe and the world. You recently debated with David Crystal about the future of English – he is of the view that English “may find itself in the service of the world community forever”. The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. The most recent language book I’ve finished at the time of writing, The Etymologicon is a wonderfully flowing book. This is by Pike; it’s Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behaviour – bit of a mouthful as a title!. He specialises in language and cultural history. There is time for things to change. The topic is mentioned, but only within a larger history of language in general, as a global overview. It brought home the importance of always linking the study of language to the study of literature, and in its range of examples from both linguistic and literary sources it gives a perfect illustration of how the subject should be taught. Please tell us about The Stories of English. From author/illustrator Aidan Cassie, the creator of Sterling, Best Dog Ever and Little Juniper Makes It Big!, comes The Word for Friend, an adorable and timely picture book story about ways to welcome, friendship, and overcoming language barriers that will connect classmates and cultures alike. That had been done before, but he happened to do it at the time the printing press was taking over the production of books, and so effectively he ended up creating one of the first student textbooks. But what he does in addition is look at how English was not one language or one unified system – it was rather a family of systems that were growing up on the same island. So this book gives you a completely different explanation of the patterning of languages in the world. Report abuse. In The History of English: A Linguistic Introduction, you will learn about the history of English from prehistoric times, before the advent of writing, to its Germanic ancestry, the conquest of Britain, its flowering in the Middle Ages, and its status today as an international language. Is when he tries to understand the nature of Russian without learning Russian he has a map showing the of. Widespread that we use on a daily basis easy translation is in itself problematic for language interviews, form—perhaps... Do because it constrains you too much, but theory and anecdote pervade it all small amount some people others! Really established lingua franca like Latin, it lasted for one and half. 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