Empires of the Word
A Language History of the World
by Nicholas Ostler · first published 2005
10mentions
5recommended by
6HN commenters
2011–2026first – last mentioned
83% recommend17% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Broad history of how languages spread and survive alongside empires, using Latin and other cases to show why some tongues outlast their cultures; good for readers curious about language history.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…widespread use of letter case is a fairly recent development), most common doesn't mean best - how the "market share" of languages and writing systems evolves is a more complex topic (Nicholas Ostler's Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World is a good book). That means looking at and comparing with other examples is often useful. It's a little like the reason you want to learn more than one programming language…
on “How I ended up conducting successful tech interviews with just 1 question” ↗Nicholas Ostler's Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World is a journey through human history as seen through a lense of expanding, contracting and competing languages spheres. Well worth a read.
on “Your language sucks” ↗The author of this article wrote a very interesting book about the connection between language and empire, "Empires of the Word". https://www.amazon.com/Empires-Word-Language-History-World/d... It is really interesting to read about how languages outlast their cultures. Latin comes to mind of course, but as the book discusses…
on “Have we reached peak English in the world?” ↗would you recommend a more recent book comparable to "Empires of the Word" by Nicholas Ostler on the subject of languages ? I am really enjoying the book, but it's over 20 years old at this point. I wonder how much of the information is out of date now.
on “The Indo-European Family Tree” ↗…you. Not quite so relevant to startups working on a product, but some good concepts nonetheless. A good summary is probably just as good as reading the book, as the core concepts are fairly simple. * Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World: http://amzn.to/tVvltK the history of the world as seen through languages. * The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East: http://amzn.to/spQCF7 - a…
on “Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011” ↗I enjoyed Empires of the Word, will have a look at the other book you recommend.
on “Timemap.org – Interactive Map of History” ↗It used to be worse. Ancient Greek had tonal accents, instead of just stresses as now. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:About_Ancient_Greek... I learned this reading "Empires of the Word", a book recommended in the HN 2011 best books thread. http://www.amazon.com/Empires-Word-Language-History-World/dp...
on “Do You Speak VCili? (like Swahili, but more difficult to learn)” ↗…phonologically-rich Greek made do with a writing system that could only express much simpler syllables. Though we have examples of that too; Antiochus of Macedon left an Akkadian inscription reading, as given in Empires of the Word [1], "I am An-ti-'u-ku-us [Antiochus], the great king, the legitimate king, the king of the world, king of E [Babylon], king of all countries, the caretakeer of the temples Esagila and Ezida, the first…
on “Minoan language Linear A linked to Linear B in new research” ↗…reflecting the speaker's gender But there the rules are the same for everyone. This is not true in general; there are languages where men and women speak according to different rules. Here's a selection from Empires of the Word: > These works [written by women] are usually written in Emesal, 'the fine tongue', a separate dialect of Sumerian, well documented in scribal dictionaries. In dialogue works this dialect is used for…
on “No Language Left Behind” ↗I don't guarantee that it's talking about Canadian French specifically, but Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003GUBIJ8/ ) has some discussion of the relationship between new world French and France French, including a contemporary source remarking…
on “Opening of Romeo and Juliet Recited in the Accent of Shakespeare’s Time [video]” ↗