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.

Empires of the World: A Language History of the World

The rise and fall of languages is often correlated with the rise and fall of empires; however, there are some interesting empires. Amaric was spoken by a large powerless group, yet it became a lingua-franca in the ancient middle east. On the other hand, the rise of Arabic was closely aligned with the rise of the Muslim empire. (However, it was primarily adopted in regions that already spoke Semitic languages.)

The stories of Chinese and Egyptian both have similar histories. Since they both had "pictographic" script rather than a phonetic alphabet, they were able to endure much longer than other languages. Even as the language was undergoing phonetic shift, the pictures could be the same. (Both sets of images that served as the impetus for neighbors to create their own phonetic alphabets.) They also both had fairly dense populations in a well-defined area.

The case of Sanskrit is much different. It spread throughout northern India, and its influence and Hindu religion were spread throughout south India. (Even though the languages were very different, they had a number of Sanskrit lone words.) The further influence was felt throughout southeast Asia, with strong language influence. (Including adoption of local alphabets based on the Devanagari script.)

Other languages have had varying "imperial" fates. Russia carved out a fast area. However, the Russian army tended to be very Russian, and a degree of autonomy was given to subject states. Many of the states dropped Russian once given independence. (However, in sparsely populated Siberia, Russian has maintained its strength.)

European imperial languages seemed to gain the most strength if they had colonizers attached. The "revolutions" in places such as the Americas were often lead by descendants of the original colonizers, rather than the earlier inhabitants.

There are also cases of people that build "empires" yet end up adopting the language of the people they conquer. (The Francs in Europe are a case in point, even though they sacked the Roman empire, they adopted the Latin language. However, they took this language to England, and eventually succumbed to the native tongue - though a plague may have helped out.)

This book is large and dense with many other details of languages. Some areas are extremely interesting. However, it can take a long time to plow through. There is also significant material overlap between this and the author's much more readable Last Lingua Franca.

The Last Lingua Franca: English Until the Return of Babel

English is currently the lingua franca of the world, used as a common language of communication. How did it get to be that way, and why English? And will it be "different" than previous lingua-francas?

Through history, there have been a number of languages used as lingua-francas. Some have been the language of imperial rulers. Others have been trade languages. Occasionally a dominating people uses a different language as the common one for communication (such as the Turks using Persian.)

There is also a difference between a second language used for communication and a native language learned at home. Second languages tend to be more stable, while first languages are subject to frequent innovation. Latin gave rise to the many Romance languages in relatively recent history. Even more recently, we have documentation of the rapid diversification of native American "common" languages under the Spanish regimes.

There are a number of reasons why languages become lingua francas, and a number of reasons why they fall. Sometimes policy causes them to fall away. Other times, they simply fall away due to lack of interest. Would English be able to maintain its global status without the similar status of the United States? Some languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, have huge numbers of speakers, but very little use outside of their native populations. (I've known Chinese or Indian people that communicate in English as their "common language".)

The book starts out fast, though in the middle it gets a little bogged down in technical details. (Some lingua-francas in central Asia still escape me.) At then end, it breaks in to modern technology and machine translation. He argues that advanced automated translation will allow everybody to communicate in their own language, thus eliminating the need for lingua francas. However, he also mentions the example of a European Union study on machine translation where the romance-language speakers had radical different feelings of the success than the non-Romance speakers? Why? Because a single word had a different connotation when translated from the French to English. If this can be the case, how can we expect people to communicate in their own, different languages?