The best books that tell the story of a language

I never considered myself a nerd, so why do I love Latin? (which I hated in school) It’s because I Iove seeing, and love teaching, what languages can do – culturally, socially, politically.

Leonhardt’s Latin: Story of a World Language gives us sweeping new perspectives. For 1000 years after the Romans, Latin was the intellectual glue of Europe, and a key to the sciences and humanities down through the 19th century. The new prestige of French, Italian, English, and the other European vernaculars in some ways threw up huge barriers.

If only Latin grammar and syntax weren’t, aargh, so challenging (though some do call this a cognitive plus). Teaser: Is English as today’s ‘world language’ actually acting as a latter-day Latin?

There was probably never a language documentary as compelling as The Story of English, and the companion book The Story of English was an inspiration for my own book – and my title.

How could the language of a small out-of-the-way island go global and become the entire world’s second language? Conquest? (that’s a plus and a minus) Dysfunctional spelling and crazy grammar? (joke) Political and cultural good fortune? (Definitely.) But what else? And to what ends?

And this language ‘game’ has had so many players besides the English – the Scots, the Irish, the Americans, Africa, and Asia. And of course, 35 years ago no one could have imagined how many more global roles English would be playing.

Many language stories have sad endings. I don’t like to over-personalize a language; it’s primarily the users that put the spice into a language or let it ‘die’. Or in the case of Yiddish, murdered in their millions.

Dovid Katz’s title evokes the extraordinary vitality of Yiddish – for centuries the language of Europe’s Jews and one of the major literary languages of the 20th century, until Nazism and Stalinism consumed all. Many survivors reached Israel, where Hebrew has taken its place. But Yiddish lives on. To me that matters.

For tens of thousands (and thriving) survivors’ descendants in the US and Europe, Yiddish is still a first language, preserving a traditional religious lifestyle  Many more, whose grandparents (like mine) migrated and raised children in other tongues, still cherish Yiddish for its songs and jokes. As do I. Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Larry David – scratch the surface and it’s Yiddish. A bittersweet tale, ongoing.

Some of the best language stories lie dissected in the work of social scientists. Not an easy read. But once in a while, someone brings it to life, enjoyably. 

One such is John Edwards, whose ‘Multilingualism’ is required reading for my course on language and politics.  Most countries are host to several languages – often a source (or a product) of ethnic pride, and why not? Sometimes, however, full-scale political and economic interventions may occur. And then, a language conflict is on the cards.

Nationalism often enflames such situations but sometimes wisdom and fortune prevail. Not long ago, Catalan and Quebecois French faced a bleak future, but have now seen political and cultural rejuvenation. But other vectors can change the story: Take the Southern Irish: The occupation over, they saw little cultural or economic value in Gaelic, which is now severely endangered.

You can piece together another trove of language stories here, this time from 20 modern Asian countries – each profiled by a different scholar. Once again, I adopted this for a course and the students were engrossed.

To take just one story: for 2000 years the vast Chinese empire had a centralized administrative tongue against a chatter of spoken dialects. But then, in the early 20th century, a sea change: the ripple of Western nationalism and liberalism that carried away the empire also produced a movement for wholesale language reform – creating one standard spoken language to unite the masses, simplifying the daunting Chinese script, even introducing Roman script.

In the end, the Communist Party settled on a Roman script just as a learning tool for children. They couldn’t erase 3000 years of history. And as I was writing my story, the parallels with China kept coming at me: The sweeping effects of modernity and nationalism, but an ancient script that says ‘Keep me’.