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Books about Language Evolution/History | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| soclydeza85 Senior Member United States Joined 3702 days ago 357 posts - 502 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 1 of 9 01 June 2014 at 1:58am | IP Logged |
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I've always been interested in the evolution of languages throughout the world; how languages from thousands of years ago (or, I guess, since recorded history) evolved in different regions throughout the centuries to become the languages we know today. Does anyone know of any good books on the topic? Or perhaps documentaries?
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| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5755 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 2 of 9 01 June 2014 at 2:16am | IP Logged |
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Empires of the Word by Nicholas Ostler
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6951 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 3 of 9 01 June 2014 at 2:47am | IP Logged |
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Ostler's book is good but it's more of a typical history book as it describes the fate of various speech communities in the past. There's not too much in there about linguistic change as much as how certain languages have attained a certain status and/or prestige level at a given period in time.
If you want to approach the subject with changes in linguistic characteristics at the forefront instead (e.g. sound changes, reanalysis of grammatical functions), you're probably best to pick the appropriate history book for a family of languages or an individual language that interests you. For example if you were interested in the link between Latin and Romance languages, I'd recommend Romance Languages: A Historical Introduction and Latin Alive: The Survival of Latin in English and the Romance Languages. If you were interested in the history of German starting from the Proto-Indo-European era I'd recommend History of the German Language 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| camus Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5029 days ago 10 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Mandarin* Studies: English, German | Message 4 of 9 01 June 2014 at 4:11am | IP Logged |
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I am currently reading "English,the last lingua franca", also by nicolas ostler. It's more of the evolution of English and not world language really, but could be a good supplementary or companion for books on that topic.
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| Duke100782 Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Philippines https://talktagalog.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4283 days ago 172 posts - 240 votes Speaks: English*, Tagalog* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 5 of 9 01 June 2014 at 5:00am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the recommendation @Lichtrausch after reading reviews of this book online I'll be buying this
book on Amazon! Well, actually my wife will be buying it for me online on Amazon China. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4048 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 6 of 9 02 June 2014 at 4:18pm | IP Logged |
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My recommendation would be Lyle Campbell's "Introduction to Historical Linguistics" as it goes through all sorts of ways languages of the world have changed among other things.
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| soclydeza85 Senior Member United States Joined 3702 days ago 357 posts - 502 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 7 of 9 02 June 2014 at 4:29pm | IP Logged |
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These all look like some great suggestions, thanks guys!
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 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5762 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 9 02 June 2014 at 5:13pm | IP Logged |
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The Loom of Language but Frederick Bodmer includes some description of the historical development of languages. It's not the main focus of the book, but the information that is there is very interesting.
The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language by John McWhorter is an easy and fun read, too. Edited by meramarina on 02 June 2014 at 5:16pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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