Empires of the Word by Nicholas Ostler
Empires of the Word is a trip around the world by language
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Published by HarperCollins, out now in paperback, 615 pages, £15.
In a nutshell.
A dizzying ride through language history.
What's it all about?
The world's population is not six billion, but just over six thousand. That is, if you subscribe to Nicholas Ostler's world view, where communities are languages which grow, conquer, give birth to new species - and, more often than not, collapse into obscurity after holding the reins of power for a brief time.
The book begins when 'the desert blooms', with the first examples of writing known to man, Sumerian, Hurrian, Hittite; all written in intricate cuneiform scripts that took a lifetime to master. Oddities abound: why did Aramaic, a nomad language, overtake the seemingly indestructible Akkadian at the height of the Assyrian empire's zenith? What is the secret behind Chinese's 4,000-year reign, spanning a vast landscape and even vaster population, yet remaining remarkably uniform - and how long can its pictographic writing survive in an alphabet-dominated world?
And what is the future for English? The question hovers over the book. Sobering lessons from history show that even the most prevalent and prestigious languages fall, sometimes through the collapse of empires, more often through seemingly random changes in its speaker groups. Consider the uncanny decline of Ancient Egyptian, which held sway for 3,000 years, or the strange fate of Latin that died not once, but twice. Not to mention the looming spectre of Mandarin Chinese, which has three speakers for every one of the other current top-four languages English, Hindi and Spanish.
Who's it by?
Formidable linguist Nicholas Ostler - he spoke 26 different languages at last count, and has degrees from Oxford University in Greek, Latin, philosophy and economics, as well as a PhD in linguistics from MIT. A lifelong devotee of Ancient Sanskrit, he studied under Noam Chomsky, often regarded as the father of modern linguistics. Now the president of the Foundation for Endangered Languages.
As an example.
"The world reversed the fortunes of these two sisters. Despite Phoenicia's glittering career, her enterprising nature and all her popularity, she quite suddenly disappeared, and among the people she had frequented, stimulated and dazzled for so long, she left no memory at all. Yet Judith is still with us, often derided and dishonoured She has even, just recently, returned to her old home, and seems to have gained a fresh lease of life."
On the strange decline of Phoenician, language of commerce across the Mediterranean, and the surprising longevity of Hebrew (or jehudith, 'she of Judah'), two languages of ancient Canaan that suffered very different fates.
Likelihood of becoming a Hollywood blockbuster
It would take an extremely imaginative director to translate this book to screen - but with Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ reviving the dead language of the bible, Aramaic, as well as Latin, there may be hope for a big-screen battle of the ancients. A subtitler's nightmare.
What the others say
"It is a compelling read, one of the most interesting books I have read in a long while. This is a great book. After reading it you will never think of language in the same way again - and you will probably think of the world, and its future, in a rather different way too." - Martin Jacques, the Guardian.
"Few books bring more intellectual excitement to the study of language." - Bryce Christensen, the American Library Association.
So is it any good?
The sheer scale of Ostler's achievement is astounding: a history of the world through language, as told by its speakers. In carrying out this feat he must attempt to piece together fragments of patterns which frequently carry more exceptions than rules.
The author's breathtaking knowledge and breakneck pace mean that single pages often condense enough information to fill entire libraries, but his ability to untangle the often complex, muddied and interwoven language histories - putting them into layman's terms and colouring them with parables and analogies - keeps the dense story alive.
Huge geographical and linguistic leaps, such as when multi-tongued India gives way to solipsistic Greece, and comparisons which are at first confounding - like the intriguing similarities between English and Chinese - are rendered effortless. Strange nuggets of linguistic history abound, such as the accidental survival of Elamite. Written on clay tablets that would otherwise have disintegrated, invading neighbours set fire to Elamite speakers' villages (near Babylon), burning them to the ground - but preserving the ancient language by firing the tablets along the way. Equally striking is the sad fact that a seventh of the approximately 7,000 language communities in the world have fewer than 12 speakers, with most set to become extinct within a generation.
What makes this book so compelling is that it is not simply a history of language, but more a history of mankind's key movements and of the socio-economic importance of speech. From linguistic 'mergers and acquisitions' to the power struggles between nations and man's earliest attempts to communicate, Empires of the Word is the dazzling story of how language shapes - and will continue to shape - ourselves, our communities and our future.
7/10
Emily Ford