The Power of Babel
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Average rating4
15
Ratings3
Average rating4
There can be few subjects of such widespread interest and fascination to anyone who reads as the strange ways of languages. In this wonderfully entertaining and fascinating book, John McWhorter introduces us to 'the natural history of language': from Russonorsk, a creole of Russian and Norwegian once spoken by trading fur trappers to an Australian Aboriginal language which only has three verbs. Witty, brilliant and authoritative, this book is a must for anyone who is interested in language, as sheerly enjoyable as non-fiction gets.
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It took me awhile to get through this book, but I found it very informative. I was interested in the subject because I recently read Everyone is African, a book about the common origins of all humans. That made me realize we must also have had a common language at one time, and so I looked for books on the evolution of language. My questions about the common language probably are unanswerable, but this book gave me an idea of how languages change, and how the common language would have changed.
