Fans pick 100 books like The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language

When researching my book, I consulted many books on literacy, but this is the one I liked the best.

Many books describe ways to improve reading and writing ability (especially for children), but this one goes beyond that and explains why we need to do them. The answers lie in the way the brain functions, and how it adapted to handle written language over the ages; in essence, how the brain learned to read and write. If we understand that, then the paths towards improving literacy (both child and adult), and addressing problems like dyslexia, become much clearer. 

Maryanne Wolf masterfully weaves historical, psychological, and educational perspectives together to present a fascinating window into the world of reading and writing. Read the book, and the reason for the quirky title soon becomes clear.

Most languages consist of huge numbers of different words. For instance, estimates for English range from hundreds of thousands to millions of words. 

While no person knows every word in a language, they will still hold a repertoire of many, many thousands of words in their mind (their mental lexicon).  Dictionaries are useful for describing this ocean of words, but an intriguing question is how the human mind manages to learn and remember so many, and then to find the exact ones it wishes to use from the numerous alternatives. 

Aitchison’s genius lies in how she is able to draw on quite complex psychological research, but yet still distill it into a fascinating and very readable account of how the mind achieves these formidable tasks.  You will come away from this book with an increased appreciation of just how clever the mind is in acquiring, storing, and retrieving vast amounts… show more.

When I took my Master course in English Language Teaching in 1992, this was one of the suggested sources.

I loved it, and so did my fellow students, because it explained language learning in an extremely clear and straightforward way. Later, as a professor, I found that my own students were similarly enthusiastic. But do not get the impression that this is just a good ‘academic’ textbook. It was written for novice English teachers, many international, and so the language is non-technical and accessible.

Lightbown and Spada take the reader through the process of language acquisition step-by-step, with numerous examples and illustrations, and with a conversational writing style. This makes the book suitable for any interested reader who desires an introduction into how languages are learned, and how they should be taught. Now in its 5th blockbuster edition, with even more pictures and examples. 

We all want to use language well. But language pundits sometimes promote grammar rules (e.g. no ‘split infinitives’) that contrast with what we hear in speech all the time.

The source of the discrepancy is traditional grammar books, which originated in the 18th Century, and were based on Latin models. But English has always had a different grammatical structure than Latin, and so some traditional ‘rules’ have never made sense. Instead of relying on such traditional prescriptive grammars, it is much better to refer to modern descriptive grammars, which describes how English is actually used nowadays.

These are based on thousands of examples of real written texts and spoken discourse, and so they can confidently report how English is really used in today’s world. The Cambridge Grammar of English is one of the best examples. 

The important word in the title is "social." The author brings together words that belong to a particular theme, such as journalism, economics, and politics. An example? A 'historical menu' from Anglo-Saxon times (bread, butter, cucumber) through Shakespearean times (tomato, potato, banana) to the present-day (pizza, tacos, hamburger). And not forgetting drinks, from beer to Coca-Cola. It's a fascinating exercise in the linguistic archaeology of social transformation.

This is a great introduction to what linguists do when they analyze languages to see how they work.

Bolinger spent his life observing how speakers use language, making notes on how and when they hesitate as they plan what to say, common errors they make, and what all this tells us about how language functions as a tool for communication. 

And he drew on his observations to tell the story of what is involved in studying how languages work. I regularly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know what linguistics is. (It is not being a polyglot!)

I must admit that I’m somewhat biased here, as Mark Baker was one of my professors in graduate school, but I love this book on its merits!

It’s very easy to think of languages as endlessly dissimilar from each other: what do English and Edo (one of the many languages in Nigeria) have in common? Or Navajo and Japanese? Or Tsotsil (spoken in Mexico) and Malagasy (spoken in Madagascar)?

It blew my mind how Baker takes a seemingly far-fetched parallel between language and chemistry and manages to show that the state-of-the-art linguistic theory allows us to find order and logic in the ostensibly chaotic variety of human languages, much like Mendeleev’s Periodic Table provides a structured way to see the tangible world around us.

Shariatmadari writes beautifully, and this book will make you think differently about how we use language and how that language uses and shapes us, both as individual actors and as a society. Our language – those everyday vocabularies and grammars that we deploy without a second thought – is neither original nor value-free; instead, “to speak is ‘to swim in an inherited stream of images and words’”, crafted by generations before us. For small talk, this may not matter so much. But for the bigger, weightier things in life, for the things that really matter, the way we talk can have real consequences on what we are able to understand, and how we are able to respond.

A whirlwind tour of what state-of-the-art linguistic science has to offer!

Even after 25 years of working in the field, I learned many new things from this book, ranging from how children acquire sign languages of the deaf to experiments trying to teach apes human language. I particularly liked the many clearly-presented examples from English and other languages.

But what was especially fun for me was a behind-the-scenes glimpse into how Adger designed an alien language for a TV show. It made me wonder how I would have done it differently and how our personal experiences influence us as scientists.

I’ve always loved observing children as they learn to speak. But I never understood what a triumph that is until I read Stephen Pinker’s book. He explores a huge range of topics, including what we can learn from the mistakes children make, how languages develop, brain imaging, major ideas in philosophy, computer speech simulation, Noam Chomsky’s ideas about linguistics, and genetic research. And he does all that by focusing on regular and irregular verbs. Sounds dull? Think again. It’s a fascinating book.