Front cover image for Empires of the Word : a Language History of the World

Empires of the Word : a Language History of the World

An offbeat natural history of language takes readers from the educational and cultural innovators of Sumeria, to the resilience of Chinese, to the global spread of English, in a volume that offers linguistic perspectives on numerous past and present civilizations
Print Book, English, 2005
1st American ed View all formats and editions
HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2005
History (form)
xxi, 615 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
9780066210865, 0066210860
58563178
Part I: The nature of language history
Themistocles' carpet
What it takes to be a world language; or, you never can tell
Part II: Languages by land
The desert blooms: language innovation in the Middle East
Triumphs of fertility: Egyptian and Chinese
Charming like a creeper: the cultured career of Sanskrit
Three thousand years of solipsism: the adventures of Greek
Contesting Europe: Celt, Roman, German and Slav
The first death of Latin
Part III: Languages by sea
The second death of Latin
Usurpers of greatness: Spanish in the New World
In the train of empire:Europe's languages abroad
Microcosm or distorting mirror? the career of English
Part IV: Languages today and tomorrow
The current top twenty
Looking ahead