Nativ Tongues : Table Of Content

1. There Are 2,796 Languages in the   World1
2. How Languages Started
3. How Languages Spread and Decline
4. 1066 and the French Invasion of English
5. How You Can Turn Thousands of   English Words into French,
    Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, or Dutch
6. Languages, Gender, and Sex
7. Language Incidents That Changed History
8. Rallying Cries of Conquest, Defiant, or Prayer
9. Words of Love and Admiration
10. Insults and Profanity around the World
11. Ethnic Slurs and Their Comparatively Innocent Origins
12. Same Sounds Different Meanings
13. Language Survival and Survival trought Languages
14. Clicks, Whistles, Gestures, and Musical Scales
15. Counting Fingers, Toes, and Computer
16. Our Mysterious Alphabet
17. An Asian Script of Subtlety and Humor
18. Languages Lost-and Found
19. Word Frequency and Some Surprises
20. Some Evocative Name for Animals
21. Do Animals Have a Language?
22. Undiplonnatic Translations
23. What's in a Nance: Places
24. What's in a Name: People
25. The View from the Tribe
26. There Were Others before Columbus
27. The Local Coloring of Proverbs
28. The Levels of Politeness
29. Hello and Goodby
30. The World's Shortest Phrasebook in the most Languages 223
31. Odd Origins and Changing Meaning
32. Palindromes, Nonstop Words, Tongue Twisters, and Historic Puns 245
33. The Language of Revolution
34. Military Codes and Linguistic Deception
35. Secret Languages, Crime, and Slang
36. Languages in Space
37. English vs. American
38. The Export of English Words
39. Someday-a World Language
Acknowledgments
Index

1
9
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21

27
33
41
49
53
59
65
71
77
89
99
109
119
125
137
141
145
153
159
169
181
189
199
207
217
223
235

245
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321