Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World
    Unavailable
    Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World
    Unavailable
    Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World
    Ebook1,069 pages16 hours

    Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World

    By Nicholas Ostler

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Nicholas Ostler's Empires of the Word is the first history of the world's great tongues, gloriously celebrating the wonder of words that binds communities together and makes possible both the living of a common history and the telling of it. From the uncanny resilience of Chinese through twenty centuries of invasions to the engaging self-regard of Greek and to the struggles that gave birth to the languages of modern Europe, these epic achievements and more are brilliantly explored, as are the fascinating failures of once "universal" languages. A splendid, authoritative, and remarkable work, it demonstrates how the language history of the world eloquently reveals the real character of our planet's diverse peoples and prepares us for a linguistic future full of surprises.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMar 22, 2011
    ISBN9780062047359
    Unavailable
    Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World
    Author

    Nicholas Ostler

    A scholar with a working knowledge of twenty-six languages, Nicholas Ostler has degrees from Oxford University in Greek, Latin, philosophy, and economics, and a Ph.D. in linguistics from MIT, where he studied under Noam Chomsky. He lives in Bath, England.

    Read more from Nicholas Ostler

    Related to Empires of the Word

    Related ebooks

    Asia Travel For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Talking Is Throwing Fictional Worlds at One Another

      Sep 9, 2020

      A few years ago, David Adger was in his office at Queen Mary University of London, where he is a professor of linguistics, when the phone rang. It was a British TV company that wanted him to invent a language for monsters with no lips, just big teeth

      10 min read

    • Article

      Why Red Means Red in Almost Every Language

      Oct 3, 2019

      When Paul Kay, then an anthropology graduate student at Harvard University, arrived in Tahiti in 1959 to study island life, he expected to have a hard time learning the local words for colors. His field had long espoused a theory called linguistic re

      9 min read

    • Article

      I Am Taught By Towels

      Sep 19, 2018

      It’s impressive how educational hand-drying the dishes can be. Almost without knowing it, one may absorb a range of more or less useful information as the cutlery gets drier and the dishcloth damper. I am thinking in particular of two literary dish t

      3 min read

    • Article

      ‘Strategic Empathy’: H.R. McMaster On Foreign Policy And China

      Sep 22, 2020

      H.R. McMaster, former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, discusses new book “Battlegrounds” and U.S.-China policy with the Monitor.

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Rise and Fall of the English Sentence

      Nov 16, 2017

      An iconic sentence, this. But how did it ever make its way into the world? At 71 words, it is composed of eight separate clauses, each anchored by its own verb, nested within one another in various arrangements. The main clause (a decent respect to t

      13 min read

    • Article

      How English Took Over the World

      Feb 27, 2024

      English has become not just the “language of Europe”—it has become the dominant lingua franca of the world. The post How English Took Over the World appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      The State Of It

      Sep 12, 2021

      The State Of It
      6 min read

    • Article

      The State Of It

      Sep 12, 2021

      The State Of It
      6 min read

    • Article

      Post-colonial Bad Jokes

      Mar 25, 2021

      Post-colonial Bad Jokes
      5 min read

    • Article

      Twists Of The Tongue

      Jun 29, 2023

      Graham Elliott writes on language and linguistics WRITING OF OUR PLANET, Rose Macaulay observed, “into every penetrable corner of it and into most of the impenetrable corners, the English will penetrate”. Rigorous in his survey of the previously pink

      3 min read

    • Article

      Culture Shock

      Mar 1, 2023

      In his essay “Of Cannibals” (c. 1580), Montaigne talks of meeting, in Rouen in 1562, three indigenous men from Tupinambá, Brazil. They had been brought to entertain King Charles IX, who at the time was just 12 years old. Traveling through Europe, the

      5 min read

    • Article

      K’noath

      Dec 20, 2020

      K’noath
      4 min read

    • Article

      Go West

      Dec 7, 2021

      Go West
      5 min read

    • Article

      Is Africa A Prisoner Of Its Past?

      Jul 16, 2020

      Is Africa A Prisoner Of Its Past?
      8 min read

    • Article

      How Has Migration Changed The World?

      Jul 16, 2020

      How Has Migration Changed The World?
      10 min read

    • Article

      Tacsi For A Moribund Language

      Jan 27, 2022

      KINGSLEY AMIS IN The Old Devils: “A sign used to say Taxi and now said Taxi/Tacsi for the benefit of Welsh people who had never seen a letter X before.” Whatever officious authority erected that sign was merely boasting about Wales’s precious particu

      3 min read

    • Article

      War Of The Words

      Mar 1, 2024

      War Of The Words
      12 min read

    • Article

      False Nostalgia

      Nov 19, 2021

      False Nostalgia
      12 min read

    • Article

      How English Conquered The World

      Aug 24, 2022

      Here’s something that Britain is good at: English. I’m not talking about oratory, novels or even Shakespeare. I’m referring to English as the world’s dominant lingua franca. In achieving this role, it has become ‘an economic skill, a marketable commo

      3 min read

    • Article

      'Sea People' Examines The Origins And History Of Polynesia

      Mar 13, 2019

      Christina Thompson deftly weaves her fascinating narrative of European travels and attempts to understand the Polynesian puzzle in her new book, though European colonization is not fully addressed.

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Conversation

      Apr 23, 2020

      The Conversation
      13 min read

    • Article

      Michael Wood On…

      Jul 6, 2023

      Michael Wood On…
      3 min read

    Reviews for Empires of the Word

    4/5

    308 ratings19 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Fascinating account of the development of world languages. The best overview I have found - detailed and knowledgeable without being dry.
    • 2/5
      Scattered, often redundant and uneven coverage of languages. Not really history of languages, rather states the obvious - language's domination rises and falls.
    • 2/5
      Much drier and more verbose than it really needed to be. Had lots of potentially interesting info, but I just couldn't slog through it.
    • 2/5
      Oh dear--I had such high hopes--and I really do love the occasional academic treatise. This just wasn't compelling, despite in the abstract sounding like a slam dunk for me. Eventually I realised one day I will die, and I'd rather have read something else. It's really, really specific, technical, and historical, and despite all the drama and romance that the subject could have had, it was about as gripping as reading about how General Motors occasionally changed their car designs, and how. No, not even car designs, less interesting, um, let's say how they changed their engine. That sort of thing. I think there's a nice opportunity for somebody to write a 250 pager on the same topic, but with more general appeal.
    • 5/5
      Filled with details and trivia. Very interesting.
    • 5/5
      If you, like me, are interested in linguistics and big-picture world history, this is the book. Looking at the history of world powers not in terms of political boundaries but of groups defined by common languages reveals a lot about where power truly lay and how different peoples identified themselves and influenced each other.
    • 4/5
      I think this a superior production, and Mr. Ostler seems to know his business. There are even some hints about how a tongue can connive towards its own longevity.
    • 3/5
      Seemingly exhaustive survey of the history of languages around the world. Written mostly for the expert. I, being only mildly interested in the topic, soon got bogged down. A more popular version of this book (without all the niggly detail) could have been written in 300 pages rather than 560! The parts I did understand, I enjoyed and will admit to skimming a lot of the rest, thankful that there was not a test at the end!
    • 5/5
      a world history through the major languages. Just my kind of tome: learned but written in a worn-lightly way. The languages come across almost like living people. The section on Greek is especially fascinating. Witty ironies here and there about what makes languages, cultures, powers survive or fade. Think Oswald Spengler or Arnold Toynbee if they'd tried to do standup at the Ed Fringe.
    • 4/5
      An impressive and sweeping view of the history of languages throughout human history. It tackles some of the big questions: Why do some languages die out? Why do some flourish, like Chinese or English?

      As it turns out, it's a really complex issue. The book starts with the earliest languages (Sumerian, Akkadian, etc.) and moves all the way up through the colonial and modern eras, and speculates on the rise and fall of our languages in the future.

      This is dense, but fascinating stuff.
    • 4/5
      This book takes a meta-meta-level analysis on "A History of World Languages" (which would have been a more accurate title), looking at languages that have dominated large swathes of the earth for the last 4000 years, and the reasons behind that dominance, be they political, economical, social or other. The author then tries to identify common features of the success and eventual decline of these languages, finally applying these factors to a forecast for the current dominance of English.It is clear that the author is deeply knowledgeable on Akkadian, Sanskrit, Nahuatl and Latin, and inevitably some other languages (such as Russian, and the Germanic and Turkic languages) receive a more superficial treatment than they would deserve. The author moves onto noticeably thin ice when he moves out of his area of specialisation and speculates about current or future economic trends (eg concerning Asia), or when he postulates the demise of Russian as a lingua franca because the Central Asian republics speak mutually intelligible Turkic languages (thereby ignoring the fact that the mutually intelligible vocabulary denotes day-to-day matters, and that specialised vocabulary has been created later, from Arab, Persian or Russian sources or by creating neologisms. As a result, these republics predominantly still communicate in Russian with each other, and Russian as lingua franca is still very much alive and well). The author neatly summarises every chapter at its conclusion, which may give some readers an impression of being condescended to (but in any case is to be preferred to excessively hermetic texts or ramshackle trains of thought).Otherwise, a well-written book and deeply researched that adds a much-needed high-level analysis to the "languages" bookshelf. A keeper, to be consulted again and again.
    • 3/5
      I'm very interested in this subject but this book is dry. How about some prose and a couple of interesting asides?
    • 4/5
      useful and informative
    • 5/5
      Very enjoyable work of linguistic history (NOT historical linguistics) that looks at how and why some languages came to be used by millions of non-native speakers, while others remained firmly stuck in their own back yards. Impressively well researched with a heavy reliance on contemporary sources, very well written, and thought-provoking from both linguistic and historical perspectives.
    • 4/5
      Ostler is at his best when writing about "classic" languages such as Sumerian, Sanskrit, Greek, or Chinese, and why they were influential. When he's writing about modern languages and their desemination this book comes off more as a potted history of Western imperialism, in regards to pointing out the limitations of force and power in terms of spreading a language. This is apart from good observations on the nature of English and the fall of Latin.
    • 3/5
      very detailed, exhaustive, fascinating
    • 5/5
      Tour de force! Not a perfect book, no, but only in the sense that nothing is perfect in this imperfectest of all worlds. He drops in and out of giving those all-important pronunciation guides, which start out making the book seem so immaculate. And the whole project of "world language history" is so macro that the later chapters, on French and Russian and English especially, have a bit of a survey-of-familiar-ground-with-tidbits feel. But these are small, not to say churlish, objections. This book is huge, with amazing sweep. It provides a theoretical framework that is fresh and of utility to the scholar as well as the armchair historian and/or pedant. It gives you the joy of getting new sounds and strange civilizations into your head, helps you understand the contingencies and the might-have-beens, and delivers up worlds beyond your imagination. And hell, I like the linguistic essentialism of "Arabic’s austere grandeur and egalitarianism; Chinese and Egyptian’s unshakeable self-regard; Sanskrit’s luxuriating classifications and hierarchies; Greek’s self-confident innovation leading to self-obsession and pedantry; Latin’s civic sense; Spanish rigidity, cupidity, and fidelity; French admiration for rationality; and English admiration for business acumen," and if that makes me a shameless modernist, well, (it doesn't, but) so be it. This book makes me feel very good about an MA in English language, and I learned a lot more along with the affirmation than I would have from PAolo Coelho or "Tuesdays with Morrie."
    • 3/5
      In the end, achieves nothing. Attempt at a sweeping, encyclopedic and truly monumental overview of the world's major languages and linguistic families. In a mix of linguistics and history, traces their origin, evolution and future. Much information contained therein, some language groups stronger than others but the author over-reaches, does not offer enough, is not illustrative in his examples, and is unfortunately unclear at times. Much was expected of this book, much was promised, but ultimately, achieves little. Hence the rating.
    • 4/5
      Fascinating history of major languages going back to the earliest written records in the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Ostler attempts to explain why some languages succeed and others don't, in terms of increasing number of speakers and spreading into new territories. The explanations are somewhat convincing but very uneven. Sometimes he seems to be rushing just to cover stuff, in particular the chapter on European languages other than English. And while he knows his languages, the interpretation of history is perhaps a bit spotty, especially as we get to the 20th century. That said, this was a good read. I learned a lot about non-European languages and their spread, as well as about the process of the spread of Germanic and Romance languages in Europe.