The Last Lingua Franca: The Rise and Fall of World Languages

Description

'SWEEPINGLY LEARNED AND ENGAGINGLY GARRULOUS . . . Sunday Times 'A MUCH-NEEDED CHALLENGE TO CONVENTIONAL WISDOM' Guardian IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, CAN WE REALLY TAKE THE DOMINANCE OF ENGLISH FOR GRANTED? In their time, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Sanskrit and Persian have each been world languages, sweeping the globe for centuries at a time. And yet they have all been displaced, just as Nicholas Ostler predicts English will be. What forces drive these linguistic currents? What characteristics do lingua francas share? And most importantly, how do they lose their power? In this revelatory and exhilarating tour de force, Ostler explores the rise of a linguistic diversity that we could never before have imagined. 'A linguist of astonishing voracity . . . the predictions are striking' ECONOMIST 'The Last Lingua Franca beautifully ties together a diverse and ambitious range of themes, which will offer something new to all readers. Its strength lies in the wealth and mixture of historical fact and linguistic insight' Times Literary Supplement 'Formidable . . . there is scarcely a page of this book that does not contain some remarkable gobbet of information' Financial Times

Nicholas Ostler is the author of Empires of the World: A Language History of the World and Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin. He studied Greek, Latin and Philosophy at the University of Oxford and holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from MIT. With a working knowledge of twenty-six languages, Nicholas now runs an institute for the protection of endangered languages.

Frequently jaw-dropping and never less than convincing -- Henry Hitchings * Financial Times * A linguist of astonishing voracity ... the predictions are striking * Economist * Extensive and engaging...A sweepingly learned and garrulous guide to historical curiosities -- James McConnachie * Sunday Times * A wide-ranging linguistic perspective. -- Robert McCrum * The Observer * As Nicholas Ostler exhaustively documents...history shows that no language will dominate the world conversation forever...More provocatively, Ostler argues that, once the dominance of English has waned, no lingua franca will replace it. -- Jonathon Keats * New Scientist * A thorough analysis of the rise and fall of different lingua francas, Ostler provides us with a series of rich examples showing how these 'common languages' achieve prominence and how they subsequently, and inevitably, lose this, left to shrivel for use only as mother tongues. -- Colin Fraser * Scotsman *