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. This book is a history of world languages which focuses on the small languages that make up about 96% of all spoken languages but are spoken by only about 4% of the world’s population. We highly recommend this book because it is not only easy to read, it goes into detail about how sign language was forbidden in schools and the fact that many attempts have been made by hearing society to prevent deaf people from using sign language. The history of books became an acknowledged academic discipline in the 1980s. 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. 7 people found this helpful. We are in danger of losing the sheer variety that we have in humanity, which is a source of cultural wealth. What it shows is that the thickness of languages on the ground – how many languages there are per unit of area – correlates very well with the temperature. 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. On the question of technology and translation, the British writer Tim Parks, who lives in Italy, said in his Five Books interview that contemporary Italian fiction writers are often adapting their style to make their work easier to translate. Please tell us more about your final pick. “I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.” [TS Eliot, The Waste Land]. I don’t know exactly how it’s going to pan out, but I think it’s very unlikely that English will expand until it takes over the world. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at editor@fivebooks.com. Douglas Hofstadter is famous for being a mathematician who is interested in patterns. “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.”. by Douglas Hofstadter So in some sense the beauties that have come across from translating Marot’s verse have provided his epitaph. Each part is structured in a different way. Read. Thoroughly recommended. Dying Words We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview. does human language differ from non-hominid communica-tion? For example, a metre in poetry is a constraint on how you can express yourself. Find a huge variety of new & used English language History books online including bestsellers & rare titles at the best prices. On Language: Chomsky's Classic Works Language and Responsibility and Reflections on Language in One Volume. Nicholas Ostler. But he’s an extremely estimable linguist and knows he can’t know the future any more than I can. 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 Republic, Plato. The topic is mentioned, but only within a larger history of language in general, as a global overview. From my attempt to show that the world’s linguistic future may be very diverse, he’s a useful straw man to attack. You must have a goodreads account to vote. But this tendency towards coalescence is certainly there. There will be other dominant powers which have non-English languages associated with them, notably the so-called BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China. 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. If we lose the range of languages that we currently have, we are not going to have that particular channel into understanding what human beings have been. He then combines this geographic view of diversity with some interesting discussion about human history and the discovery and spread of different agricultural practices. After each major chapter, he has a sort of counter-chapter, which tells you how the standard story is only one dimension and that different things were going on in different minority communities at every stage of the story. 4 This is a very important work and I’m just sorry that this book doesn’t seem to be available in English. 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. When that language ceases to be transmitted, some of those things will be translated, but inevitably a lot of those things will go. The Stories of English As things stand at the moment, the forces that have put English where it is – which mostly had to do with global economic power, first of the British Empire and then the United States – have come to the point where they are being overtaken. The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English … The best history books. White: And now for something a little different: one … For 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. There have been different assaults on the diversity of English at different times. 'The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way' by Bill Bryson. One of the purposes of a history of language is to find ways to answer these and similar questions. 120. There have been many lingua francas and English, although it is the most widespread that we know of, is a relative latecomer. He did this for Spanish, but later, as a result of his work, the Spanish missionaries who went out to the Americas started writing grammars of all the languages they encountered there. It’s language history from the point of view of the “little guy”. Each of these texts had an impact on the way we understand governance. Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow returns with a sweeping and dramatic portrait of one of our most compelling generals and presidents, Ulysses S. Grant. Your first book choice is by Nicholas Evans, an Australian academic and one of the leading figures in language documentation. Experimental fiction often uses unusual forms of syntax, style, or form—perhaps taking the form of fragments, footnotes or parallel narratives. Is it a mix of theory and anecdote? This was an amazing thing: Nobody had ever done this with such a wide variety of languages before, and certainly not with languages they considered to be used by savages. $15.39. “The idea took root that language could now be learnt from books and that there could be a technology or system of learning languages.”. Global communication is taking over these major languages. You might think that’s impossible to do because it constrains you too much, but you can actually do it. 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. It paints a living portrait of the constant transformation of culture as reflected in natural language. That’s the basis of my view of the world. Read The book begins with an essay on ‘culture’ itself, dissecting the historical development and social appropriation of this ubiquitous and far-reaching semantic construct. Learning languages comes easier to some people than others. 3 In addition to that, we are losing the possibility of a sense of identity, which goes with each of these languages. This book is for the serious philologist and/or linguist. list created October 29th, 2017 These grammars had been written more than 1,500 years earlier. This is an attempt to provide a standard history of English and it does that very well. The books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings follow, forming a history of Israel from the Conquest of Canaan to the Siege of Jerusalem c. 587 BC. Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. David Nettle is an anthropologist of language. Read. It’s widely presumed that the English language will become entrenched as the world’s lingua franca and that minority languages will continue to die out. The title of the book is worthy of the whole because Le Ton Beau de Marot is literally “the beautiful tone of Marot” but indistinguishable when you pronounce it to meaning “the tomb of Marot”. 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. In this book, a team of international experts cover the entire recorded history of the English language, outlining its development over fifteen centuries. Amazon.com: History of Language (Globalities) (9781861890801): Fischer, Steven Roger: Books Le Ton Beau de Marot It’s in five parts, but theory and anecdote pervade it all. by Daniel Nettle So this book gives you a completely different explanation of the patterning of languages in the world. 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