The Story of Language

Rating:
Summary: People who like this sort of thing will...
Review: I enjoy learning about language and where our words come from. So for people who like this sort of thing, they will find this the sort of thing they like. Examples: Patella (the medical term for kneecap) in Latin meant 'frying pan' and the food 'paella' comes from the same Latin word. In France, a cat does not 'purr' but goes 'ron-ron'. The name of the breed Samoyed, is the name of a Siberian tribe and the name means 'self-eating' because it was thought the tribe was cannibalistic. The book is filled with this stuff, so I found it great fun to read. Now if people complain of pain in their kneecap, I think they are complaining of pain in their frying pan.

Rating:
Summary: A good introduction to the wonders of language
Review: Long ago, I learned that language is the second most complex thing humans learn (the first is time, because it's purely abstract.) That piqued my curiosity about it - how the first languages developed; why they are simultaneously so different and so similar; the ways in which history and language are intertwined; the development of the minutiae of grammar; how we learn language, syntax, vocabulary, and writing; the differing ways cultures have dealt with their specific linguistic needs, and why... I wanted it all.

This book answered some of my questions in a way that I, a non-linguist, could understand. I had tried to do a little reading on my own, but quickly got bogged down in Chomsky and the other eminences grise of the field - I wasn't prepared for doctoral dissertations, and that's pretty much all that was available. Pei's book was the first one I found that brought this stuff down to the layperson's level. Simplistic? Sure, but easily understandable. I understand that Pei's academic reputation has suffered because of his attempts to reach the great linguistically unwashed masses, but I appreciate him for setting me off on a journey that continues to this day. For me, there is no more fascinating subject; without language, nothing is possible. We take our ability to express ourselves very much for granted, and never stop to think about what a colossal task we accomplished when we learned a language - this book ought to be the canon of the self-esteem movement!

I know it is out of print, but I was fortunate to find a hardback copy in a used book store. I hope you do, too - and that it lights your fascination with language as it did mine.

Rating:
Summary: Still a classic introduction
Review: The late Mario Pei was professor of comparative romance philology at Columbia University, and this book is still one of the few introductions to linguistics that is accessible by the layman. There's not much on Chomskyan transformational grammar and other very technical topics in linguistics, but that's okay, there is a lot to learn about the basic structure and nature of language before one should be tackling Chomsky.

This includes basic concepts about grammar and the parts of speech, the basic principles of word morphology, phonetics, and phonology, language change and evolution, structural linguistics and de Saussure's important and influential ideas in the area, understanding the major language families and how they differ from each other, and the same for the individual languages in your own language group, and so on.

Pei discusses these topics in the non-technical and easy to understand way that he was known for. All in all it's still a useful book for the non-specialist. After this you should try a real college-level introductory linguistics text if you're willing to take the next step. After that, or maybe after reading another one or two books on general linguistics, such as Sturtevant's Introduction to Linguistic Science, I recommend John Lyons' great classic, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. It's out of print but worth picking up if you can find a used copy. If Lyons's book isn't available then try Donna Jo Napoli's more recent text.

After reading Lyons's book, you'll be ready to start tackling real professional research literature and books in the field, and getting a good, solid book on transformational grammar theory would probably be the next step to do after that. But even if you stop with Pei's book and don't go on to other more advanced readings, you'll still have gained a new appreciation for language and the fascinating science that is linguistics.