Empires of the word : a language history of the world

The story of the world in the last five thousand years is above all the story of its languages. Some shared language is what binds any community together and makes possible both the living of a common history and the telling of it. Yet the history of the world's great languages has been very little told. Empires of the Word, by the wide-ranging linguist Nicholas Ostler, is the first to bring together the tales in all their glorious variety: the amazing innovations in education, culture, and diplomacy devised by speakers of Sumerian and its successors in the Middle East, right up to the Arabic of the present day; the uncanny resilience of Chinese through twenty centuries of invasions; the charmed progress of Sanskrit from north India to Java and Japan; the engaging self-regard of Greek; the struggles that gave birth to the languages of modern Europe; and the global spread of English. Besides these epic ahievements, language failures are equally fascinating: Why did German get left behind? Why did Egyptian, which had survived foreign takeovers for three millennia, succumb to Mohammed's Arabic? Why is Dutch unknown in modern Indonesia, though the Netherlands had ruled the East Indies for as long as the British ruled India? As this book splendidly and authoritatively reveals, the language history of the world shows eloquently the real character of peoples; and, for all the recent tehnical mastery of English, nothing guarantees our language's long-term preeminence. The language future, like the language past, will be full of surprises.

head Of The Foundation For Endangered Languages, Ostler Draws On His Extensive Study And Research, Mostly Into Now Dead Languages, To Trace The History Of The World's Major Languages. Language Is Always Linked To A Particular Time And Place, He Says, But At The Same Time It Is A Unbroken Link To All People In All Times, And Has Played A Larger Role In History Than Any Prince Or Economy. First He Considers Early Languages That Became Dominant In Certain Areas Or By Migration, Then More Recent Ones That Have Spread Throughout The World By Colonialism. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, Or

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ostler's Ambitious And Accessible Book Is Not A Technical Linguistic Study-i.e., It's Not Concerned With Language Structure-but About The Growth, Development And Collapse Of Language Communities And Their Cultures. Chairman Of The Foundation Of Endangered Languages, Ostler's As Fascinated By Extinction As He Is By Survival. He Thus Traces The Fortunes Of Sumerian, Akkadian And Aramaic In The Flux Of Ancient Middle Eastern Military Empires. Ancient Egyptian's Three Millennia Of Stability Compares With The Longevity Of Similarly Pictographic Chinese-and Provides A Cautionary Example: Even A Populous, Well-defined Linguistic Community Can Vanish. In All Cases, Ostler Stresses The Role Of Culture, Commerce And Conquest In The Rise And Fall Of Languages, Whether Spanish, Portuguese And French In The Americas Or Dutch In Asia And Africa. The Rise Of English To Global Status, Ostler Argues, Owes Much To The Economic Prestige Of The Industrial Revolution, But Its Future As A Lingua Franca May Falter On Demographic Trends, Such As Booming Birth Rates In China. This Stimulating Book Is A History Of The World As Seen Through The Spread And Demise Of Languages. Maps. Agent, Natasha Fairweather At A.p. Watt Ltd. (july 8) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

This unusual and authoritative natural history of languages narrates the ways in which one language has superseded or outlasted another in the past, and what it is about - for example - Greek, Sanskrit, Mandarin Chinese and English that has led to their supremacy at different times An offbeat natural history of language takes readers from the educational and cultural innovators of Sumeria, to the resilience of Chinese, to the global spread of English, in a volume that offers linguistic perspectives on numerous past and present civilizations