The best books on language

Any book by Robert Macfarlane is a delight to read. In Landmarks, he turns his attention to the profound and ancient ties between the English language and the landscapes of the British Isles. Always an evocative writer about place, he shows in this book a loving attention to the words that emerge from particular sites and traditions in Britain and Ireland: words like “eylebourne” (an intermittent spring that overflows at the end of winter), “cruach” (a rugged peak with pinnacled tops), “glaur” (a muddy mess) and “wonty-tump” (a molehill). He also demonstrates the lasting importance of such words – if we lose the ability to describe a landscape, we also lose the power to understand it.

Julia Sedivy has taught linguistics at two universities. Fortunately, she also knows how to write about language without lapsing into academic jargon. In Memory Speaks, she mixes recent findings about bilingualism and multilingualism with a forceful, nuanced exploration of her own life. A native speaker of Czech, Sedivy almost lost her language after emigrating with her family to a North American continent where Czech has no place and English has extinguished most Indigenous tongues. Her prose is infused with a rare mixture of scholarship and intimacy.

Any book about language should be well-written, and this brief work of prose displays the luminous skill of a gifted poet. Sadiqa de Meijer moved to Canada as a child, yet the words, sounds, and cadences of Dutch remain deeply embedded in her imagination. Her succinct, elegant investigations of Dutch and English, family and home, resound far beyond her personal history. “Mother tongue,” she asks, “is this when you’ll surface, under cover of night, in the mind’s somnolent dark?”

The authors of books about language don’t always have great stories to tell. But Dan Everett does. His riveting account of the language and culture of the Pirahã people of the Amazonian rainforest is astonishing on many levels: the personal (Everett arrived in Brazil as a Protestant missionary, but in losing his faith he gained a new vision of life), the linguistic (Pirahã breaks so many rules, it gives traditional linguists nightmares), the philosophical, even the political. Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes is an exhilarating intellectual adventure. 

Keith Basso argues with a quiet authority that a sensing of place is a cultural activity unlike any other. His book relies on a deep understanding of Arizona land as well as a familiarity with Apache culture and naming traditions. In translation, Apache place-names often require entire phrases like “White rocks lie above in a compact cluster” or “Coyote pisses in the water.” To learn the meanings and stories behind those names is to experience the land itself in a powerful way – new and perplexing for English speakers, ancient and vibrant for the Apache people.