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Loading... The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Languageby John McWhorter
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Another great one by McWhorter. Very funny and eye-opening. (  ) Jaylia3 | Aug 19, 2009 |  An accessible exploration of liguistic change over time. Fascinating. ( ) readinggeek451 | Jun 13, 2009 | knepveu | Jan 10, 2009 | After having listened to McWhorter lecture (on audiocassette) on language, it was nice to have an actual book to read and see what he's talking about. I liked the fact that it wasn't a dry tome, but rather included some real life. A good book for a newcomer to the topic; I do agree that the chapters are long, but they're broken into 1-4 page subsections for those who can't sit and read for an extended period of time. (  ) jfcameron | Nov 27, 2008 | Although the subject matter of this book is one of enormous and lifelong interest to me, I had only dipped into this before now and this was my first attempt to read through the whole book. This largely didn't work for me - the chapters are too long and rambling, and poorly structured, with excessive use of long-winded examples. The editor should really have taken a good look at this and produced a more tightly structured book of half or two thirds the length. For this UK reader, there were also too many slightly flippant and highly irritating and unnecessary contemporary or near contemporary American cultural references that spoiled the flow of the book. Could have been a good deal better. (  ) john257hopper | Sep 15, 2008 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 006052085X, Paperback)There are approximately six thousand languages on Earth today, each a descendant of the tongue first spoken by Homo sapiens some 150,000 years ago. While laying out how languages mix and mutate over time, linguistics professor John McWhorter 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. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:11 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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