Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World

Ostler's survey of how languages spread and change and why some languages take root while others wither and die is really interesting. BUT... I have a B.A. in Linguistics, I study the history of ancient Rome and Greece and of Europe in the Middle Ages for fun, and I found this book tough going. Ostler covers a large time span, going from the beginnings of written words to the present, and a fair chunk of geography (Asia, the Middle East, Eastern and Western Europe, the Americas and North Africa). The history of these regions is presented in a pretty good bit of detail, but is so densely packed that it flies by too fast to get a handle on it unless you already know it. Likewise, unless you have a background in language or languages, you'll probably struggle with the numerous texts in archaic languages, which are written in their original writing system, and then phonetically (but, confusingly, with different representations for similar sounds in different languages, rather than just using the standard system of phonetic symbols), and then in English translation, although you could easily skip everything but the translations and just try to go along with the general idea. Just know that although this book is presented as being written for a general reader, it is still quite academic in tone, something like you would expect for a graduate lecture on the subject. There are multiple footnotes on nearly every page, adding to the sense of an academic paper.

All that said, there is a lot to love about the book if you have the requisite background or at least are interested in the subject matter and willing to kind of just go with the flow. The gist of Ostler's argument is that languages spread in a variety of ways -- conquest, trade, emmigration -- and that whether the native or incoming language dominates, or even survives secondarily, depends on a variety of factors, including population density, inter-marriage, whether a language is the province of the elite or used primarily for religous services or trade, how broad an area the language is used in as a lingua franca, etc. The best section is probably that of how Spanish spread in South and Central America and came to displace the native American languages spoken throughout, and how close it came to dying out at various stages of history. The Chinese languages, Aryan languages, Arabic, Latin, Greek, Russian, French, Portuguese, Dutch, German and English are also looked at in varying degrees of detail, and Ostler examines their spread through military, political, religious and cultural lenses.

The book is a lot of work, but worth the effort to anyone interested in language, cultural influence, or history, or who just wonders whether we'll be seeing an English-only world anytime in the near future. Hint: don't bet on it!

Well, so it seems I am going to be in the minority in stating my general dissatisfaction of this book. It is hard for me to pin down exactly why I didn't like it.

Perhaps it was the fact that for the first hundred pages, it was hard to track the authors point. I've know enough to know that if you don't track the text early on, just give it a little while, read some more, and you'll usually get in gear. But that just did not happen here.

I found the style of narrative confusing, as the author has a way of jumping back and forth, and making it hard to tie everything in.

The author also tends to skim over some important issues, or at least, what I would consider important. But after all, isn't that what a review is, but a subjection opinion? I think in all, this is more of a social commentary than a linguistic discourse. More time is spent on examining the social impact of language spread rather than discussing technical details, which I was hoping for.

No solid details on how the early alphabets were heavily modified until we reach our current alphabets. Even tho there are plenty of books on the matter, I still enjoy reading it.

At about one-third into the book, I found myself skipping large sections of text, until I eventually just shut the cover and shelved it.

I could not put this book down until, disappointed, I ran out of pages to read. Dr. Ostler's book perfectly combined my greatest interests--history and linguistics. I do wish there had been a bit more depth in his treatment of Arabic, the "single hyperlanguage community" and something about its influence on Latin-origin Spanish (comparable to the influence of Norman French on Germanic English). My only quibbles (I'm an editor and can't help it) is that Dr. Ostler didn't comment, on page 378, the strong influence that Spanish has had on both surnames and given names in the Philippines, even though the spoken language has almost completely died out there. Also Italian is not included in his "top 20" list on page 526 yet is mentioned as included on that list on page 528. That said, I have been fervently recommending this book to everyone (as my son had recommended it to me).

Ostler's book is an attempt to provide an introductory history of many of the major languages of the world. He particularly focuses on languages that grew to become supranational, lingua francas, etc., and how and why they became so. While many of the languages he discusses are ones we'd expect, e.g. English, French, Spanish, Chinese, etc., Ostler also discusses international languages of the past such as Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, etc. He even gets into modern and ancient languages that we don't regularly hear of, such as Aramaic, Sumerian, Malay-Indonesian, Aztec, and others.

I will confess that this topic is one of my favorites. However, by way of criticism, I would have to point out the very uneven treatment of various languages. For example, Arabic's treatment is minor compared to that of Spanish or French. He also chooses languages somewhat randomly for review. It's obvious that a lengthy discussion of every language spoken in numerous countries could not fit into one paperback book (even though this one is somewhat long, at around 560 pages). But the lack of coverage of certain languages is surprising.

Also, the style of writing used can be somewhat technical and verbose at times, especially for someone who hasn't studied the subject before. Nevertheless, if you're interested in this subject, this book is a must-read and will entertain you for days and serve as a reference for years to come.

I had the pleasure in 2005 of watching Mr. Ostler give a presentation on a PBS channel about Empires of the Word. At the time I thought his presentation was disjointed and he came off as somewhat condescending toward his audience. But, after reading his book, I completely changed my mind. Empire of the Word is well-researched and its scope is wide. It deals with more than just language, although languages are its main theme. The book is very readable and for anyone interested in language, linguistics and history, I would recommend it as a "must" read.