- Hardcover: 336 pages
- Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd; 2002 First Edition edition (7 Mar 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0434007897
- ISBN-13: 978-0434007899
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.6 x 3.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 394,442 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Power Of Babel: A Natural History of Language
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
In his enormously ambitious book The Power of Babel, John McWhorter offers an account of the first common language ever spoken by human beings, and proceeds to explore why it then fragmented into the 6,000 languages that are spoken today across the globe. As Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, McWhorter is perfectly qualified to provide a witty and accessible guide to his subject. As he puts it, "the process by which one original language has developed into six thousand is a rich and fascinating one, incorporating not only findings from linguistic theory but also geography, history, sociology. It is this fascinating story that I will share with you in this book."
McWhorter's theory of language draws explicit parallels with Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct and the biological theories of Richard Dawkins. The Power of Babel absorbs and uses everything from evolutionary theory to Monopoly and soap operas to offer a dynamic story of language which originally "split into thousands of branches that each have evolved in part to maintain what is necessary to communication but in equal part have evolved just because various semantic spaces, perceivable to and processible by human cognition but nonessential to the needs of speech, were 'there' to be evolved into". For McWhorter, languages do not "evolve"; instead they endlessly transform themselves across and into other languages. As a result, "today's languages are Polaroid snapshots of ever-mutating transformations of the first language in six thousand different directions". He controversially concludes that there is no possibility of ever recovering the original first language, but that "of the languages extant today, the ones that most closely approximate the first language are creoles".
The Power of Babel is a clever and engaging book, never dry or boring, but it sometimes overplays the grandness of its claims, which can sometimes seem rather straightforward. --Jerry Brotton
The Times
'McWhorter writes with the gusto of a Victorian specimen collector, cramming the book with information to delight and instruct...
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First Sentence
"Hebrew"" ""But why don' we speak Hebrew, Mom?""" Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
"Hebrew"" ""But why don' we speak Hebrew, Mom?""" Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It's difficult to know where to begin with this tome.
It's kinda like "Will & Grace" meets sociolinguistics. There is a serious work in there on linguistics, but this is somewhat overwhelmed by McWhorter's immaculate scholarship and bizarre errors.
"Welsh [hangs on] in England" (p256) - sorry, Wales is in Great Britain not England. And there are many Welsh for whom English is not a first language.
The book is as much about a bibliomaniac sitting in his appartment with his cat, eyebrows and DVD collection, as it is about the history (or non-history)of language. Anyone hoping for a helicopter view on historical linguistics will have to look elsewhere.
There is rather more about pidgins and creoles than the book's thesis might warrant, and in the end I found McWhorter's lack of understanding of balanced bilingualism rather sad and annoying.
Overall it's a reasonably enjoyable read if you enjoy languages and 20th century TV. To be honest there are much better sources of information.
It's kinda like "Will & Grace" meets sociolinguistics. There is a serious work in there on linguistics, but this is somewhat overwhelmed by McWhorter's immaculate scholarship and bizarre errors.
"Welsh [hangs on] in England" (p256) - sorry, Wales is in Great Britain not England. And there are many Welsh for whom English is not a first language.
The book is as much about a bibliomaniac sitting in his appartment with his cat, eyebrows and DVD collection, as it is about the history (or non-history)of language. Anyone hoping for a helicopter view on historical linguistics will have to look elsewhere.
There is rather more about pidgins and creoles than the book's thesis might warrant, and in the end I found McWhorter's lack of understanding of balanced bilingualism rather sad and annoying.
Overall it's a reasonably enjoyable read if you enjoy languages and 20th century TV. To be honest there are much better sources of information.
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I've been reading books about language and linguistics for many years and have rarely been as disappointed by a book. If you extract all McWhorter's own self-referential little comments about his childhood, stories about television shows and comic books, and "cute" footnotes (example: 6. "Hats off to the 'Simpsons' house composer...." 7. "I like that one too." 9. "Dino fans: Yes, I know....", to take just one chapter), there is scarcely any new or interesting information in his book.
Who is the book aimed at? On one hand, the overly colloquial style ("Make no mistake: I love written language deeply and enjoy few things more than composing prose on the page" !!) argues that it is aimed at a reader who knows nothing whatever about the subject and needs to be pulled in by things like analysis of a McDonald's ad in German. On the other hand, the long, long, long sections about creoles and pidgins seem to be aimed at a reader who is already fascinated by that subject. Well, at any rate this book was NOT aimed at me-- an interested and educated amateur.
Format:Kindle Edition
I am puzzled by the inconsistency of quality of this book. I read the kindle version, and the first think that strikes is the poor punctuation. Missing full stops, and obviously he cannot see the difference between a dash and a hyphen, which is unsettling. Then there are many poor analogies with American popular culture, most of which I didn't get. On the other hande, there is interesting data, and many conclusions that make a lot of sense. Also the analogies between language evolution and biological evolution are very relevant and appropriate.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
'Fancy that' or 'so what'?
While I can't be as entertaining (and I'm not as well-informed) as the presumably bilingual Mr Foulkes-Arellano, I concur with his rating. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Simon G. Barrett
Good book no cover
Book was delayed by snow and that it came form canada. Came in okay condition but with NO COVER SLEEVE?!! shame
Published 16 months ago by Coffers
Fascinating subject, poor presentation
Although the subject matter of this book is one of enormous and lifelong interest to me, I had only dipped into this before now and this was my first attempt to read through the... Read more
Published on 15 Sep 2008 by John Hopper
The power of babel
If your interested in historical linguistics from an interested lay-perspective or the subject is new - its well worth the read - informative and enterraining - the Richard Dawkins... Read more
Published on 9 April 2003 by jooles
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