Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World

While there are plenty of books chronicallying the rise and fall of empires, this book focuses on the languages that often (but not always) rise and fall with them. Often the imperial power will impose its language on the conquered. However, there are cases where a different languages is adopted for convenience. The imperial language may come to be the common language spoken by everyone. Or, it may merely be used by the elite, while the local language continues to be used for everyday speech. Sometimes the language may spread by people using it as a "prestige" or a language of culture. A common tongue my splinter into local dialects, or a single dialect may rise up to become a common tongue. Religion may cause a certain language to maintain prestige.

The book is very long and full of examples throughout history. It follows a mostly chronological history of the world through languages. Languages like Sanskrit, Hebrew and Arabic have been tied to religions and have had long histories. Mandarin Chinese is tied to a large empire and has a long history. By using pictographs, many different dialects can easily communicate with each other. English has had a relative short history, yet has become an important language. It had barely come into being when the country was conquered by the Norman French. They attempted to put their language in place for administration, yet left the local language for the commoners. Eventually English came back, and became well used in the colonies. English supplanted the multitude of local indigenous American languages. (In part due to the people dying an due to the many different languages.) The greater number of colonists helped English dominate the other European languages. Spanish and Portuguese had similar fates in their empires (though for somewhat different reasons.) The Dutch had a vast empire, but very little language staying power. They did, however, help give birth to the Malay/Indonesian language. 

France became an important tongue in Europe and a large lengua franca. This was due in part to the early unification of France. The country had a standardized language and also had a more unified environment and power in their country. However, in the last century, French has lost the position of the "global language" to Islam. 

Arabic became extremely common due to the connection with Islam.

The book focuses only on some of the larger languages. There are occasional generations on reasons for the rise and fall of languages, with analysis of a few common reasons. However, the main focus is on exploring the history.