The Rise and Fall of Languages - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Rise and Fall of Languages write by Robert M. W. Dixon. This book was released on 1997-12-11. The Rise and Fall of Languages available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. A different approach to the theories on language evolution and change.
Scientific Babel
Scientific Babel - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Scientific Babel write by Michael D. Gordin. This book was released on 2015-04-13. Scientific Babel available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. English is the language of science today. No matter which languages you know, if you want your work seen, studied, and cited, you need to publish in English. But that hasn’t always been the case. Though there was a time when Latin dominated the field, for centuries science has been a polyglot enterprise, conducted in a number of languages whose importance waxed and waned over time—until the rise of English in the twentieth century. So how did we get from there to here? How did French, German, Latin, Russian, and even Esperanto give way to English? And what can we reconstruct of the experience of doing science in the polyglot past? With Scientific Babel, Michael D. Gordin resurrects that lost world, in part through an ingenious mechanism: the pages of his highly readable narrative account teem with footnotes—not offering background information, but presenting quoted material in its original language. The result is stunning: as we read about the rise and fall of languages, driven by politics, war, economics, and institutions, we actually see it happen in the ever-changing web of multilingual examples. The history of science, and of English as its dominant language, comes to life, and brings with it a new understanding not only of the frictions generated by a scientific community that spoke in many often mutually unintelligible voices, but also of the possibilities of the polyglot, and the losses that the dominance of English entails. Few historians of science write as well as Gordin, and Scientific Babel reveals his incredible command of the literature, language, and intellectual essence of science past and present. No reader who takes this linguistic journey with him will be disappointed.
The Last Lingua Franca
The Last Lingua Franca - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Last Lingua Franca write by Nicholas Ostler. This book was released on 2011. The Last Lingua Franca available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The author of "Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin" presents an erudite and provocative examination of the rise and coming fall of English as the world's language. Illustrations. Maps.
Empires of the Word
Empires of the Word - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Empires of the Word write by Nicholas Ostler. This book was released on 2005-06-28. Empires of the Word available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The story of the world in the last five thousand years is above all the story of its languages. Some shared language is what binds any community together and makes possible both the living of a common history and the telling of it. Yet the history of the world's great languages has been very little told. Empires of the Word, by the wide-ranging linguist Nicholas Ostler, is the first to bring together the tales in all their glorious variety: the amazing innovations in education, culture, and diplomacy devised by speakers of Sumerian and its successors in the Middle East, right up to the Arabic of the present day; the uncanny resilience of Chinese through twenty centuries of invasions; the charmed progress of Sanskrit from north India to Java and Japan; the engaging self-regard of Greek; the struggles that gave birth to the languages of modern Europe; and the global spread of English. Besides these epic ahievements, language failures are equally fascinating: Why did German get left behind? Why did Egyptian, which had survived foreign takeovers for three millennia, succumb to Mohammed's Arabic? Why is Dutch unknown in modern Indonesia, though the Netherlands had ruled the East Indies for as long as the British ruled India? As this book splendidly and authoritatively reveals, the language history of the world shows eloquently the real character of peoples; and, for all the recent tehnical mastery of English, nothing guarantees our language's long-term preeminence. The language future, like the language past, will be full of surprises.
Empires of the Word
Empires of the Word - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Empires of the Word write by Nicholas Ostler. This book was released on 2011-03-22. Empires of the Word available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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.
