{"id":416,"date":"2006-11-15T02:52:29","date_gmt":"2006-11-15T07:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=416"},"modified":"2018-08-19T21:06:49","modified_gmt":"2018-08-20T01:06:49","slug":"14843-%c2%a0%c2%a0-nicholas-ostler-empires-of-the-word-a-language-history-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=416","title":{"rendered":"14843. (Nicholas Ostler) Empires of the Word, A Language History of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

The title of this book is a lit\u00adtle mis\u00adlead\u00ading. Only a few of the world\u2019s thou\u00adsands of lan\u00adguages are even men\u00adtioned in it. What the book is real\u00adly about is the suc\u00adcess\u00adful Lin\u00adgua fran\u00adcas<\/em>, the lan\u00adguages that achieved wide\u00adspread usage through con\u00adquest, trade, or cul\u00adtural pres\u00adtige. So his atten\u00adtion focus\u00ades on Akka\u00addian, Ara\u00admaic, Greek, San\u00adskrit, Chi\u00adnese, Malay, Latin, Por\u00adtuguese, Span\u00adish, French, Russ\u00adian, and Eng\u00adlish, each of which expand\u00aded far beyond their eth\u00adnic pud\u00addles. On this top\u00adic, it is a fine intro\u00adduc\u00adtion to the gen\u00aderal read\u00ader. Any\u00adone who stud\u00adies world his\u00adtory should read it. Ostler is at his best when talk\u00ading about San\u00adskrit, which he obvi\u00adously is par\u00adtic\u00adu\u00adlarly attract\u00aded to. His expla\u00adna\u00adtion of why San\u00adskrit is so rich in puns, for exam\u00adple, is very inter\u00adest\u00ading. Else\u00adwhere, I\u2019ve writ\u00adten about the sophis\u00adti\u00adca\u00adtion of the San\u00adskrit gram\u00admar\u00adian Pani\u00adni<\/a><\/u><\/span>. Ostler gives a clear expla\u00adna\u00adtion of why his work is so remark\u00adable. <\/span>Ostler is not, like many peo\u00adple who have writ\u00adten on the top\u00adic, unthink\u00adingly tri\u00adumphant about the future dom\u00adi\u00adnance of Eng\u00adlish as a world lan\u00adguage. In the book, he shows exact\u00adly how a \u201cuni\u00adver\u00adsal\u201d lan\u00adguage can evap\u00ado\u00adrate its own util\u00adity and pop\u00adu\u00adlar\u00adity. Per\u00adson\u00adally, I sus\u00adpect that Eng\u00adlish will retain its role as the \u201cLatin\u201d of this cen\u00adtury, and that this will in no way inhib\u00adit the renais\u00adsance of local ver\u00adnac\u00adu\u00adlars and new region\u00adal play\u00aders. We are enter\u00ading a new age of lin\u00adguis\u00adtic wealth.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title of this book is a lit\u00adtle mis\u00adlead\u00ading. Only a few of the world\u2019s thou\u00adsands of lan\u00adguages are even men\u00adtioned in it. What the book is real\u00adly about is the suc\u00adcess\u00adful Lin\u00adgua fran\u00adcas, the lan\u00adguages that achieved wide\u00adspread usage \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[946,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b-reading","category-bu-reading-2006"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9326,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions\/9326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}