USA
African American Vernacular English (AAVE) 514
American Revolution 486-487
annexation of states 488, 494-495, 509-510
and Australian English 514n
and China 147
demographics 531
economy 379
General American pronunciation 81, 514
Hispanic population 378n
immigration 535
indigenous population 488-490
influence of 514-515
population 153n
and Spanish 378
spread of English 489, 549, 577n9
Uto-Aztecan languages 351
Uwa see Tunebo
Uzbekistan 423n, 437, 443n, 547
Valentijn, François, Dutch writer 401
Valera, Father Blas, Spanish priest in Peru 345, 357-358, 360, 365
Valla, Lorenzo, Italian humanist 27
Valverde, Fray Vicente, Spanish friar 342
Vandals 20, 275, 305, 307, 309, 332n, 400
Vanuatu 508
Varangians see Vikings
Veda 175
Vega, Garcilaso de la, Peruvian writer 342-343, 344-345, 356, 360
Vega, Lope de, Spanish dramatist 344
Venerable Bede, English monk 31n
Veneti 280-281, 290, 309, 423 see also Slavs
Vercingetorix 301
Vergil, Roman poet 253
Vieira, Father Antonio, Portuguese priest 392
Vietnam 46n, 138, 146, 162, 204-205, 207, 529
Portuguese trading posts 387
Union indochinoise 417
Vietnamese 145n, 528
Quôc-ngu (’National Language’, romanized script) 414n
Sino-Vietnamese 162-163
Vikings 312, 425, 426n, 447n, 460
Visigoths 101n, 275, 305-307, 310
Vlach nomads 310
VOC see United East India Company
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), French writer 410
Vulgate bible 294
Wace, Robert 459
Wade-Giles romanization of Chinese 115n
Waiting for the Barbarians (Kavafis) 228
Wales
and Norman invasions 463, 518
plague 313
Welsh 93, 270n, 274, 300, 303, 464, 473n, 517
Walter of Coventry, English writer 463
War and Peace (Tolstoy) 410
Washington, George, US President 498
Wèi dynasty 140 see Tabgach
Wellesley, Richard, British governor-general of Bengal 498
Wends 430n
Wemdly, Georg Henrik, translator of Bible into Malay 402
West Asia 46-49
West India Company (Westindische Compagnie—WIC) 397-398, 493
Whitman, Walt, American poet 474n
Wilberforce, William, British campaigner 501
William the Bastard (the Conqueror), Norman king of England 319, 460
Williams, Roger, British linguist 480-481, 484-485
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Austrian philosopher 13, 549
Women’s speech 51-53
World Almanac 378
Writing
accounting tallies 154
alphabetic script 63-64, 67
capitals, upper- vs lower-case 316n
cuneiform 11n, 32, 37, 40, 42, 46, 50, 51, 54-55, 57, 61-63, 72n, 512
earliest known 34, 110
hieroglyphs 11n, 34, 113-116, 121, 124-125, 128, 132-133, 154-158, 173
ideographic systems, character of 46n, 54, 154-158
Japanese kana syllabary 116
logograms 37, 62
materials 63, 67, 78, 83, 97, 135n
pictograms 51, 56, 113-116, 132, 135, 156, 157
scribes 67
shorthand symbols 46
syllabary 47, 56, 154, 156
Wu, Chinese empress 151n, 169
Wu Zong, Chinese emperor 120
Wyclif, John, English translator 473
Wyndham, Thomas, English traveller 388
Xerxes, king of Persia 68, 85
Xià dynasty 118
Xibo dialect of Manchu 144
Xiāngnú 106, 139-140, 144, 153, 219
Xuan-Zang, Chinese pilgrim 120, 138n, 159, 193-194, 198, 221
Yaghnobi 108
Yale romanization of Chinese 115n, 497n
Yan kingdom 140
Yi 134, 145n
Yi Jing, Chinese pilgrim 193-194, 201
Yì Jīng (Classic of Changes) 154
Yi Zong, Chinese emperorl58
Yiddish 442
Yokot’an 348
Yoruba 530
Yuán dynasty 121, 141, 143, 146, 147
Yucatec Maya 1, 348
Yuè (Cantonese) dialect of Chinese 136, 141, 147, 528
Yuezhi see Kushāna
Yugoslavia 310
Yuta-Nawan languages see Uto-Aztecan
Zakar-baal, king of Byblos 71
Zambia 507
Zanzibar 104-105
Zapata, Juan Ventura, Nahuatl dramatist 368
Zapotec 348, 352, 355
Zend-Avesta 31
Zhao kingdom 140
Zheng-he, Chinese admiral 147, 160-161, 339
Zhōng-guo (China) 167
Zhāu dynasty 118, 136
Zhuang 134, 141
Zhuang-zi, Chinese sage 150
Zimbabwe 507
Zirids 100
Zoroastrians 48, 96, 98, 141, 158, 537
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The first seed for this book came from John Coates of BRLSI, Bath’s cultural society; he invited me to give a lecture on language, as part of a millennium series on ‘Histories of the Future’. Only when I sat down to consider the histories of a few major languages, did I realise what a vast and important theme this opened up, yet one that was largely omitted from general knowledge.
Lola Bubbosh guided my first steps into the world of literary agents. There I was fortunate to find Natasha Fairweather, who could see how best to present my theme to publishers. Besides that, she pointed out other works which have enriched my own understanding of it. It is thanks to her, and my perceptive and conducive editors, Richard Johnson, Andrew Proctor and Terry Karten, that my first foray into publishing has been so straightforward. Colleagues of theirs have also amazed me in different ways—at A. P. Watt Linda Shaughnessy selling translation rights across the world before I had even written a word; and at HarperCollins Kate Hyde coping with unprecedented material coming from all sides, and the UK and US cover-designers Dominic Forbes and Roberto de Vicq. Others closer to home gave stern but helpful criticism on early drafts, my daughter Sophia, my father-in-law David Thesen, above all my wife, and prime literary consultant, Jane Dunn. The faults that they found were not—as they charitably thought—the result of my being too deep, but just of my being too opaque. At any rate, their efforts have made it much easier for others to see what I have been getting at all along.
As for intellectual debts while writing, I have been aided by scholars all over the world, who have given of their time and generously clarified details of languages in which they were far more learned than I: Ghil’ad Zuckermann, Geoffrey Khan (Akkadian and Aramaic); Rashad Ahmad Azami (Arabic); Hassan Ouzzate, Salem Mezhoud (Berber); Abdou Elimam (Punic); Christopher Child (Swahili); E. Bruce Brooks (Chinese); Harekrishna Satpathy, Radha Madhav Dash, Sanghamitra Mohanty, Prativa Manjari Ralt (Sanskrit), Ether Soselia (Georgian), María Stella González de Perez (Spanish and Portuguese), Frances Karttunen (Nahuatl), Aurolyn Luykx (Quechua), Emma Volodarskaya (Russian) and David Crystal (English). Andy Pawley and Darrell Tryon have sharpened my knowledge of languages in the Pacific, and Otto Zwartjes, Even Hovdhaugen and Françoise Douay of language studies in Europe and the Middle East. Above all, Peter T. Daniels, after benefiting me with his profound expertise in Aramaic and Middle-Eastern languages, has gone on to improve the whole text in a variety of ways both as attentive reader and punctilious typesetter, even unto cuneiform. Other readers who have corre
cted errors include Frank Abate, Bart Holland, Dan Hughes, Tim Nau, Noriko Akimoto Sugimori, Mark Turin and most of all Stephen Benham and Fran Karttunen. I am sincerely grateful to them all. But needless to say, I am still responsible for mistakes that remain.
The intellectual journey to complete this book has incurred other debts. Most recently, my debts are to Tony McEnery, who conjured up my trips to India in 2001; and to Jane Simpson and David Nash, who—after twenty-five years of shared insights about languages and theories—made it possible for me in 2002 to visit Australia. That dawn-land of today’s linguistics has access to the great feed-stocks of language data, and there I could present this material to audiences of the learned and enthusiastic in Perth, Sydney and Armidale. Among them I have John Henderson and Nick Reid to thank too, for invitations and memorable hospitality.
More distantly, but no less importantly, the background knowledge harvested here has come to me from a long and varied line of language teachers: I think particularly of Maurice Bickmore, Bella Thompson, Ken Batterby, James Howarth, Geoffrey Allibone, Jack Ind, Robert Ogilvie, Jasper Griffin, Peter Parsons, Oliver Gurney, Anna Morpurgo Davies, Wayne O’Neil, Paul Kiparsky, Ken Hale, Daniel Ingalls, Rama Nath Sharma, Susumu Kuno, Bart Matthias, Edwin Cranston, Rosalind Howard, Martin Prechtel, Damian McManus, Kim McCone and Stiofáin Ó Direáin.
These guides are like prophets. In our country language teaching is often misrepresented as misguided drudgery; and really to learn another language can often seem a nigh impossible task. There is no royal road to it, but gold glints in unexpected places all along the path. For me it has always been the surest route to new worlds that lie beyond my imagination, sic ITVR AD ASTRA.
About the Author
NICHOLAS OSTLER’S serious interest in languages took him from first-class honors in Classics at Oxford and a doctorate in linguistics and Sanskrit at MIT to teaching in Japan and a succession of research projects from Crete to New Mexico, aimed at introducing languages to computers. He then moved on to the problems of human speakers and made himself an expert on the Chibcha language of ancient South America, which yielded to Spanish in the eighteenth century.
Nicholas Ostler is chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages (www.ogmios.org), a charity that supports the efforts of small communities worldwide to know and use their languages more. He lives in Bath, England.
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PICTURE CREDITS
32-33, 202 Text specimens and translations from Daniels, Peter & William Bright (1996), The World’s Writing Systems, New York: Oxford University Press. Copyright $cP 1996 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
285-287 From Lambert, Pierre-Yves (1997), La Langue Gauloise, Paris: Editions Errance
All reasonable efforts have been made by the author and publisher to trace copyright holders of the materials featured in this book. In the event that the author or publisher are contacted by any of the untraceable copyright holders after the publication of this book, the author and publisher will endeavour to rectify the position accordingly.
PRAISE FOR Empires of the Word
“Covers more rambunctious territory than any other single volume I’m aware of, with greater wit than we’ve a right to expect in the service of such ambition, and a wonderful ear for the project’s poetry.”
—John Leonard, Harper’s
“[A] monumental new book…. Ostler furnishes many fresh insights, useful historical anecdotes, and charming linguistic oddities…. His massive overview of major languages in world history puts the current global spread of English in perspective.”
—Chicago Tribune
“The variables are so many, and the historical precedents so contradictory, one can do little more than pose the questions. This Ostler does, with all the clarity and humility of true scholarship. A marvelous book, learned and instructive.”
—National Review
“Empires of the Word is a story of dramatic reversals and puzzling paradoxes. A rich … text with many piercing observations and startling comparisons.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Revolutionary…. This is more than ambitious: it’s a colossal undertaking, executed with a giddying depth of scholarship, yet the detail is never too thick to swamp the general reader.”
—Boston magazine
“A work of immense erudition, surveying the world’s major languages, starting with the Sumerians of the Euphrates valley and concluding with the contemporary hegemony of English.”
—Christian Science Monitor
“[A] wide-ranging history of the world’s languages…. [Ostler] brilliantly raises questions and supplies answers or theories.”
—Washington Post
“Delicious! Few books on language answer the questions that people actually ask linguists, such as why some languages are spoken by millions and others by just a few hundred. Ostler’s book shows how certain lucky languages joined humankind in its spread across the world, many of them eventually vanishing without a trace, and one of them—guess which?—currently ruling the planet.”
—John McWhorter
“Daring insight…. Sparkles with arcane knowledge, shrewd perceptions, and fresh ideas…. I can’t think of a volume that has better interpreted the linguistic history of Eurasia, from Sumerian onwards, or of the entire world in the post-Columbian era. The sheer sweep of his analysis is breathtaking … A book such as this could only have been written by someone of considerable audacity as well as erudition.”
—Times Literary Supplement
“Enlightening…. Always challenging, always instructive—at times, even startling or revolutionary.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Few books bring more excitement to the study of language.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Ostler’s new history is as much about societies as it is about the languages they speak…. One of the lessons that shines through the book is that neither conquest nor economic might guarantees a language’s survival.”
—The Economist
“Ambitious and accessible…. This stimulating book is a history of the world as seen through the spread and demise of languages.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A masterly comparative analysis of empires’ linguistic effects throughout history…. Ostler writes in a concise yet engaging manner, displaying an impressive grasp of the history of languages…. This book is accessible to anyone with an interest in language.”
—Library Journal
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2005 by HarperCollins Publishers.
First U.S. edition published in 2005 by HarperCollins Publishers.
EMPIRES OF THE WORD. Copyright © 2005 by Nicholas Ostler.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-04735-9
FIRST HARPER PERENNIAL EDITION published 2006.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Ostler, Nicholas.
Empires of the word : a language history of the world /
Nicholas Ostler.—1st American ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-06-621086-0
1. Language and languages—History. I. Title.
P107.088 2005
409—dc22 2005046010
ISBN-10: 0-06-093572-3 (pbk.)
&n
bsp; ISBN-13: 978-0-06-093572-6 (pbk.)
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