Empires of the Word

A “monumental” account of the rise and fall of languages, with “many fresh insights, useful historical anecdotes, and charming linguistic oddities” ( Chicago Tribune ).   Nicholas Ostler's  Empires of the Word  is the first history of the world’s great tongues, gloriously celebrating the wonder of words that bind communities together and make possible both the living of a common history and the telling of it. From the uncanny resilience of Chinese through twenty centuries of invas