Reddit reviews Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World

I've a few recommendations here, both about writing and about langauge as a whole

• Cuneiform by Irving Finkel as a (very) short but nice introduction to Cuneiform. I enjoyed it a lot, especially since I couldn't seem to find other popularized introductions to the subject.
  
• Empires of the Word by Nicholas Ostler. This is a behemoth, a world history in the context of languages. I love the book, although it can be a bit information heavy at times. The focus is on langauges, but comes with lots of nice examples of writing as well. (I found this book through The Language Instinct by Stephen Pinker, which is tries to describe language from a neurological PoV, an amazing book)
  
• Breaking the Maya Code by Michael Coe, one of the players in the breaking of the Maya script. I didn't know a thing about mayan language or script before reading this, and albeit being too detailed on who-did-what, the mayan script is beautiful and this books documents this wonderfully.
  
• The Riddle of the Labyrinth by Margalit Fox. The theme is similar as the one above, but this is focused on the decipherment of Linear B, where both script and language was unknown. Very recommended, especially in the methodology on how to catalogue large number of correlations between script pairs in the time before SQL...
  
  I'm following this thread closely... :)

I just made a video about this 2 weeks ago. I included a lots of fiction because I think that's a good entry to get people thinking about deeper issues. My list has Pinker's Language Instinct, of course, and also David Ostler's Empires of the Word for popular nonfiction. That one is historical linguistics.

For fiction, I had Shaw's Pygmalion, C.S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet (linguist get kidnapped and taken to Mars, finds universal language. Strong Christian overtones.), and Maria Doria Russell's The Sparrow (Jesuits send an expedition to alien planet, linguistic, sociological, religious problems ensue.).

Thanks for asking, I was about to ask this question too.

Anyways here's my contribution, haven't read it yet (as I was reading another book recently) but here you go:

https://www.amazon.com/Language-Death-Canto-Classics-Crystal/dp/1107431816

Language Death.

https://www.amazon.com/Empires-Word-Language-History-World/dp/0060935723/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=B4NRG3VGFM2K6R058R97

This one is recommended with "language death", seems interesting but I'm not sure how it is.

One I recently read from my library was Lingo, https://www.amazon.com/Lingo-Around-Europe-Sixty-Languages/dp/0802124070/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479413646&sr=1-1&keywords=lingo and this oe was a pretty fun light read, with little tid bits about 60 languages from Europe.

To learn more about this and other major world languages I can recommend this amazing book.

you might enjoy this book.

I think that Sor Juana's plays in nahuatl are religious. And the music compositions in nahuatl are religious too.

The book I was talking about is the Florentine Codex. It is written in nahuatl and Spanish and it is about the Aztec world (customs, religion, and even animals and way of living). It was written by Indians that were taught to write, under the supervision of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún. If I remember correctly these people that learned arts and writing had been nobles before the conquest. It is hard to find sources on my phone. The book can be read online:

https://tecpaocelotl.livejournal.com/25254.html

I did not know about Tupi, but it sounds interesting. I will take a look at that. The Brazilian empire is a fascinating topic. I have seen some videos online that talk about it. I have never learned Portuguese, but I can get way more than the general idea. Brazilian YouTubers produce a lot of good videos about history!

In Mexico at first friars tried to evangelize in the indigenous languages, but because it is too much work (they did learned the languages, and even wrote grammars sometimes though) they decided to stick to nahuatl, the biggest language. They kept using the language also for some legal affairs until the crown changed the policy hundreds of years later. I read the detailed story in the following book:

https://www.amazon.com/Empires-Word-Language-History-World/dp/0060935723/ref=asc_df_0060935723/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312155960128&hvpos=1o3&hvnetw=g&hvrand=11995308479004741996&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9007733&hvtargid=pla-452502828902&psc=1

What he says makes a lot of sense, but I have never tried to find other sources. I guess there are many sources in Spanish concerning the use of nahuatl after the conquest. This book also talks about the history of Portuguese and other global languages.

I read Vasconcelos' essay not long ago, because I found an article somewhere on the construction of the Mexican identity. It seems that the phenomenon of trying to find elements to be different from Europe at the end of the XIXth century happened all across Latin America then. Ironically nationalism at that time seemed to have been a European idea too.

I do not know of any other works like Vasconcelos', but you should look into what his friends were doing at the time. They might have had similar ideas. This is a TV show he made in the 50s:

https://youtu.be/Hmhq1bcnrKM

He appears in the show and mainly discusses history.

You should also look into Mexican muralism (ca 1920). The painters incorporate indigenous elements in their works (and socialism too):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_muralism

Forgive me for replying so late, but I happen to study this particular subject right now. The gist of it is about as follows.

The Assyrians did not only conquer the Aramean (and other) tribes, they deported massive amounts of them out of their homelands into the Assyrian territory (similar to what the Babylonians did with the Judeans a few centuries later: see the Babylonian exile). This ensured that they couldn't revolt against their oppressors or be of any nuicance. Intead, they were put to work in their new homes: as soldiers, skilled craftsmen, etc. In order to get the most "use" out of them, the Assyrians treated them relatively well: they were given good living conditions, were allowed to keep to their own local traditions (as long as they didn't interfere with the Assyrian good), live among their family, speak their own language, get good jobs, etc. This fact, in combination with the sheer numbers (several millions) of the Aramean deportees living in Assyria, gave them a position in which they could exert influence on daily life, including the spread of their language.

There is quite a lot of scholarly literature on this topic; one of the experts in the field is Professor F.M. Fales from Udine University, Italy. Many of his articles can be downloaded from his Academia page. For a broader introduction I can recommend Empires of the Word by Nicholas Ostler, which has a chapter on the success of Aramaic.

Go for it. I hope it works out for you.

I'm interested in going back to school to study linguistics/history. This book cemented the idea that language is fundamentally the most important aspect of individuals, society and humanity as a whole.

Good luck!

For centuries the Egyptian language (pre-Arabic) would have been one of the world's most important languages, and it is basically gone today except for religious use among Coptic Christians.
Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World is a very detailed account with many, many examples of formerly-widespread languages.

>A Mongolic Language that came with the Golden Horde into Eastern Europe and has been there since

That would be incredible. Their literature would be insane!

>A descendant of Ancient Macedonian spoken in the Hindu Kush or thereabouts, because of Alexander the Great

I actually thought about this when reading "Empires of the Word" by Ostler!

> For example, how much words you would create if you have only 2 letters?

Are you serious? That makes no sense. If you have e.g. only 10 letters you can create exactly 1814400 different 8 letter words, so one could assume that 10 letters is enough for a language that would have close to two million 8-letter words, which would be more than enough for anything since one needs to know ~1000 words to understand 75% of English.

That's simply not how languages are formed/transformed, nor "measured". E.g. German is considered the most expressive language because whenever there's a term missing for something they simply lump words together and they have a new word (and that's the reason behind claims of superior German philosophy). So it's not "how many words can one invent", but "how much information can one put in the least number of words".

But I honestly believe that you should learn a bit more about languages, even from popular literature like Steven Pinker, but I'd always suggest Empires of The World to anyone.

This is a pretty good book that you'll find interesting, I think: https://www.amazon.com/Empires-Word-Language-History-World/dp/0060935723

This one should be good, too: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Lingua-Franca-English-Return/dp/0802717713