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

Bites off more than most general readers can chew

Nicholas Ostler is a British scholar with degrees in linguistics, Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, among others. He is currently the chairman of the Foundation for Ancient Languages. The publisher HarperCollins says Ostler has “a working knowledge of twenty-six languages.” His book Empires of the Word was published in 2005.

In this book, Ostler writes about what he calls “language dynamics,” that is, how languages are born, proliferate, migrate, and die. Why does one language succeed in dominating large portions of the world, through millions of native and secondary speakers, while many others languish and disappear over time? Ostler explains how these rises and falls have played out numerous times over the course of world history due to causes such as military conquest, imperialism, trade relations, economic influence, religious conversion, government bureaucracy, mass media, and perceived status and prestige. Ostler doesn’t provide a unifying thesis as to how languages survive and thrive. Rather, he examines the spread and decline of languages over the course of history and examines each pivotal turning point on a case-by-case basis, often drawing parallels between the trajectories of ancient and modern languages. He focuses much attention on the languages that are most prominent in the world today, and how they got that way.

As for the intended audience, I’m guessing this is a history book written for linguists. Ostler certainly assumes a lot of prior knowledge of history and languages on the part of the reader. I was hoping for something a little more accessible to general readers, like Gaston Dorren’s books Lingo and Babel, which cover many of the same topics as this book but in a much more user-friendly manner. Empires of the Word is such a relentless barrage of detail it is difficult to see the forest for the trees. Ostler’s prose often reads like a text composed entirely of footnotes. Foreign words discussed in the text are often accompanied by a phonetic approximation of pronunciation, yet there is no key provided as to the system of phonetic notation used, so the reader is simply expected to know that. Even if the notation is a standard with which linguists would be familiar, the reliability of the phonetic transcriptions is called into question by typographical issues with font glyphs and diacritics (in the ebook, as discussed below). The only thing that might make me think this book is meant for general readers is Ostler’s repetitive summarizing of his points and conclusions. By the time you get to the end, it feels like you’ve read the same book three times.

Ostler likes to quote from historical texts. He presents these quotes in their original language (often non-Latin alphabets) and then in English translation. It is often interesting to see the comparison between the two writing systems. Early in the book, however, Ostler uses the French phrase “coup de grâce.” In the ebook edition, the “a” accented with a circumflex is replaced by an “s” with an hacek. This is a font error that likely does not occur in the print edition, but this caused me to question the accuracy of the spelling and diacritics of all the foreign words, of which there are many, throughout the ebook. How do I know if what I’m seeing is correct? The “s” with an hacek appears quite frequently, and some words have dollar signs in them. Of course, a font problem is no fault of the author’s, but rather a production issue that is the publisher’s responsibility, so Ostler is not to blame. Near the end of the book, there’s a chapter about the top twenty languages in the world today, in terms of number of speakers. Throughout the chapter, Ostler repeatedly refers to “the list,” yet the list itself is not provided to the reader. My guess is that the list was formatted as a table, and that table was excluded from the ebook. Perhaps that’s also what happened to the pronunciation key. HarperCollins really did not do a very good job of putting this ebook together, resulting in a rather annoying experience for the reader.