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The History of Languages: An Introduction (Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics), by Tore Janson
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This is an introduction to the history of languages, from the distant past to a glimpse at what languages may be like in the distant future. It looks at how languages arise, change, and ultimately vanish, and what lies behind their different destinies. What happens to languages, he argues, has to do with what happens to the people who use them, and what happens to people, individually and collectively, is affected by the languages they speak.
The book opens by examining what the languages are the hunter-gatherers might have spoken and the changes to language that took place when agriculture made settled communities possible. It then looks at the effects of the invention of writing, the formation of empires, the spread of religions, and the recent dominance of world powers, and shows how these relate to great changes in the use of languages. Tore Janson discusses the appearance of new languages, the reasons why some languages spread and others die, considers whether similar cyclical processes are found at different times and places, and examines the causes of internal changes in languages and dialects.
The book ranges widely among the world's languages and mixes thematic chapters on general processes of change with accounts of specific languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Latin, Greek, and English.
- Sales Rank: #623123 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Oxford University Press, USA
- Published on: 2011-12-17
- Released on: 2011-12-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.70" h x .70" w x 9.60" l, 1.15 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 304 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
Review
"A highly readable introduction to the history of languages intended for students and general readers with an interest in history, anthropology, politics and linguistics. Though the central focus of the work is on the history of standard European languages, other languages such as Arabic and Chinese are considered in some detail...In sum, this textbook reinforces the idea that the study of language is linked to the study of history and society. It is appropriate for an introductory course in historical linguistics (though supplemental readings in historical phonology and morphology would need to be included in the syllabus), and it will give the student a solid overview of how societal changes effect language, as well as spark interest in a wide variety of topics such as language policy, language contact and language shift."--Linguist List
"A very useful university handbook...[The author] does not shy away from complex or controversial issues. Instead, these issues are put forward with interest, presenting to the reader the most recent scientific contributions to difficult topics with caution and moderation." Journal of Historical Linguistics
About the Author
Tore Janson is now affiliated to the Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University. Until his retirement in 2001, he was Professor of African Languages at the University of Gothenburg. Previously, he had been Professor of Latin at the same university and is a world expert on its history. He is the author of the international bestsellers Speak: A Short History of Languages and The Natural History of Latin.
Most helpful customer reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
I'm about half way through, but.....
By Amazon Customer
The History of Languages: An Introduction is written as an Oxford Textbook in Linguistics. But don't let "textbook" or fears that linguistics can be dry deter you. This text (mine is the paperback) is readable and accessible to anyone who travels, who has ever wanted to imagine the arc of language development in a chosen area.... or who wonders--beyond the late night idle chatter level--how and why people have ended up writing and speaking so differently in different parts of the world. It's not a breezy book, but it's not stuffy. It's carefully written and is worth reading in chunks with times inbetween for thinking.
The author puts outline questions at the beginning, good helpful section headers, and some follow up questions at the end of each chapter. I AM an English language professor, and like the prior reviewer said was his case, I too certainly will recommend this to students. Our university has an Around the World semester, and if this book can come out on Kindle, students like ours who are to be exposed to vastly varying languages in a semester (Arabic, Spanish, Thai, Hungarian etc) could benefit from the discussions.
Savvy high schoolers and up--anyone with an interest in language/cultural history--will be able to understand the sequences on the multiplication of languages (e.g., Latin splintered) and the death of others (like Gothic or Cornish, or the languages swallowed up by Chinese). Professor Janson writes with a conversational tone, working in familiar names like Dante and less familiar terms like Khoisan. He gives enough information to keep us in the discussion but not so much as to be ponderous. What I enjoyed is the humility exhibited in phrases like "Linguists disagree about..." making the reader feel more like a co-discoverer about languages rather than someone being talked down to.
While I'm reading the book sequentially (and underlining a lot), I could imagine someone dipping in and out of the chapters too, for serendipitous enjoyment and learning via sectional gobbits. Susan Bachman
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating
By Joey Stanley
This book was suggested to me by a professor and it's one of the most interesting books I've read.
As a brief outline, it spans the history of languages from before human languages existed to scenarios in the distant future. He explains the importance of writing systems, such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, Chinese, Greek, Latin, and Arabic. There's a great section that deals with Latin and when it actually ceased to be spoken. General world history is explained to describe what happened to the world's langauges and how they are inseparably tied together with those events. There's also a fascinating section on language birth, creation, and death. The books ends explaining the current situations of English and of Chinese, and ends with speculations on the future.
I'd recommend this to anyone interested in language, history, or any other related field. It's free of linguistic jargon, and could be understood by people of all academic fields.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Good Introductory Text
By Anne Mills
Read the title of this book carefully, because the book is just what the title says. It is not a book about historical linguistics, it is a book about the history of languages, placed firmly in the framework of political and social history. The book proceeds to discussion of how language itself might have evolved, through the identification of language families, through the development of individual languages, and finally to what the future might hold. The author is notably balanced in his approach, and modest in his claims. Overall, the focus is on European languages and on English in particular, but there is enough discussion of other languages and language groups to make this a more general approach than one often sees. One very strong point is the style. It is accessible and well-written, which makes it a pleasant read for the non-student even though it is clearly a textbook. And it avoids the "acadamese" that has become a curse in so much serious writing about the humanities. I didn't enjoy this book as much as "Empires of the Word", which covers much of the same ground, but that may be because that was a book written for popular consumption, and this is au fond a text. And I should stress that I learned a good bit from "History of Languages", even though I have read a great deal on the topic.
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