Tore Janson

I thought this was a really good cursory look at the history of latin. When I say cursory though, I mean it (only the first half of the book is actually devoted to its history). It does not go into great detail, it just rather charts its course through western history. Easy to read though and it gives a decent sense of the language and how it stands today. I will say though, for those who have actually studied the language, the second part could come in handy when trying to brush up. It show more gives a good concise overview of all the verb conjugations and noun declensions et cetera, so if you were going to try and read something again in Latin, it would be a great reference if you no longer possess your old text books.

In the authors defence, I have seen some people write criticisms as to how he presents Christianity. I have to disagree, it is not a bias on his part. What I enjoyed most was how much he balanced the ancient and sometimes pagan traditions along side the assimilation of the language within the Church. Obviously, the church won out, and the history of that battle is far from pretty on the side of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless he does give credit where credit is deserved, and that is in how the church was in fact able to preserve the language and ancient texts through the several houndred years of the middle ages during which a great amount of writings were lost.

I only give this a three because of how sketched out the history is told (and for the fact that it surprisingly has a good deal of spelling and grammer errors of its own, much like this post). I would still recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the subject but who does not wish to devote years of their life reading the actual scholarly work. show less

Read the title of this book carefully, because book is just what the title says. It is not a book about historical linguistics, it is a book about the history of languages, placed firmly in the framework of political and social history. The book proceeds to discussion of how language itself might have evolved, through the identification of language families, through the development of individual languages, and finally to what the future might hold. The author is notably balanced in his show more approach, and modest in his claims. Overall, the focus is on European languages and on English in particular, but there is enough discussion of other languages and language groups to make this a more general approach than one often sees. One very strong point is the style. It is accessible and well-written, which makes it a pleasant read for the non-student even though it is clearly a textbook. And it avoids the "acadamese" that has become a curse in so much serious writing about the humanities. I didn't enjoy this book as much as "Empires of the Word", which covers much of the same ground, but that may be because that was a book written for popular consumption, and this is au fond a text. And I should stress that I learned a good bit from it, even though I have read a great deal on the topic. show less

Etwas fluffig insgesamt, der Leser wird keinesfalls durch eine zu hohe Informationsdichte überfordert, und damit auch der letzte Depp versteht, was der Autor sagen will, wird gerne mal was zweimal gesagt.

Written in readable simple language - accessible and interesting.