|
There are approximately six thousand languages
on Earth today, each a descendent of the tongue first spoken
by Homo sapiens some 150,000 years ago. How did they all
develop? What happened to the first language?
In this irreverent tour of territory too
often claimed by stodgy grammarians, linguistics professor
John McWhorter ranges across linguistic theory, geography,
history, and pop culture to tell the fascinating story of
how thousands of very different languages have evolved from
a single, original source in a natural process similar to
biological evolution. While laying out how languages mix
and mutate over time, he reminds us of the variety within
the species that speaks them, and argues that, contrary
to popular perception, language is not immutable and hidebound,
but a living, dynamic entity that adapts itself to an ever-changing
human environment.
Full of humor and imaginative insight, The
Power of Babel draws its illustrative examples from
languages around the world, including pidgins, creoles,
and nonstandard dialects. McWhorter also discusses current
theories on what the first language might have been like,
why dialects should not be considered "bad speech,"
and why most of today's languages will be extinct within
one hundred years.
The first book written for the layperson
about the natural history of language, The Power of Babel
is a dazzling tour de force that will leave readers anything
but speechless.
John McWhorter is associate professor
of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley.
He is the author of Word on the Street: Debunking the
Myth of a Pure Standard English and the bestselling Losing
the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America. He lives in
Oakland, California.
|
