Goodreads: Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Wow. Not for dumb kids. This is one of those books that exposed me to a flood of history, ideas, cultures, facts, and theories that I had never before managed to encounter. It filled in lots of gaps I knew I had along the way, like how New York changed hands from being Dutch to being English, or how Phoenician language became Punic and the language of the Carthiginians. It is a remarkable book in the same way that Guns, Germs and Steel or A Short History of Nearly Everything are remarkable - on nearly every page you will have learned something that will fascinate you.



If you're in the right mood, that is. This book took me nearly a year of stops and starts to get through. It can be, let's say, a little dry. But it's still the kind of book I want to make other people read just so I can have the pleasure of discussing it with them. But it is NOT an undertaking for the faint of heart or short of attention span. Anyone up to the challenge?


View all my reviews.

STELLLA!!!! We need a big toy frog!

"Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station. "

First off, I'm not sure the store sells snow peas by the unit "spoons." Secondly, how thick exactly do you want your slabs? I'm not sure scooping blue cheese into a bag is the best idea. And by Wednesday, it may not be smelling all that great. Plus, by then, won't Bob have gotten his own snack?

These are some of the thoughts that confronted me as I listened to that paragraph over and over at the GMU Speech Accent Archive. You can browse by birth language, region, or native phonetic inventory. But no matter which clip you listen to, it's about Stella, her shopping list, and your upcoming rendez-vous on Wednesday. A few favorites:

* South African
*Northern Australian
*Macon, Mississippi - sounds like Tommy Lee Jones sometimes
*York, UK - this is pretty close to the local accent here
*Viscaya, Spain - requires a little more patience than the others.

If you find a cool one that I missed (which shouldn't be that hard), post it in the comments for me.