000			02437pam a2200301 a 4500
001			2005046010
003			DLC
005			20190729102932.0
008			050317s2005 nyuab b 001 0 eng
010			_a 2005046010
020			_a0066210860
040			_aDLC _cDLC _dDLC
049			_aEY8Z
050	0	0	_aP107 _b.O88 2005
082	0	0	_a409 _222
100	1		_aOstler, Nicholas.
245	1	0	_aEmpires of the word : _ba language history of the world / _cNicholas Ostler.
250			_a1st American ed.
260			_aNew York : _bHarperCollins Publishers, _cc2005.
300			_axxi, 615 p. : _bill., maps ; _c24 cm.
504			_aIncludes bibliographical references (p. 579-589) and index.
520			_aPublisher description: 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 achievements, 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 technical mastery of English, nothing guarantees our language's long-term preeminence. The language future, like the language past, will be full of surprises.
650		0	_aHistorical linguistics.
948			_au173849
949			_hEY8Z _i33039000751320
596			_a1
903			_a9390
999			_c9390 _d9390