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"An absorbing, scholarly account of the history of the Latin language, from its origins in antiquity to its afterlife in our own time...Ad Infinitum treats its readers with the dignity of Roman citizens."―The Wall Street Journal
The Latin language has been the one constant in the cultural history of the West for more than two millennia. It has defined the way in which we express our thoughts, our faith, and our knowledge of how the world functions, its use echoing on in the law codes of half the world, in the terminologies of modern science, and, until forty years ago, in the liturgy of the Catholic Church. In his erudite and entertaining "biography," Nicholas Ostler shows how and why Latin survived and thrived even as its creators and other languages failed. Originally the dialect of Rome and its surrounds, Latin supplanted its neighbors to become, by conquest and settlement, the language of all Italy, and then of Western Europe and North Africa. After the empire collapsed, spoken Latin re-emerged as a host of new languages, from Portuguese and Spanish in the west to Romanian in the east, while a knowledge of Latin lived on as the common code of European thought, and inspired the founders of Europe's New World in the Americas. E pluribus unum. Illuminating the extravaganza of its past, Nicholas Ostler makes clear that, in a thousand echoes, Latin lives on, ad infinitum.
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Nicholas Ostler is the author of Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World. He is chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages (www.ogmios.org), a charity that supports the efforts of small communities worldwide to know and use their languages more. A scholar with a working knowledge of eighteen languages, Ostler holds an M.A. from Oxford University in Greek, Latin, philosophy, and economics, and a Ph.D in linguistics from MIT, where he studied under Noam Chomsky. He lives in England, in Roman Bath, on the hill where Ambrosius Aurelianus defeated the Saxons for a generation.
Praise for 'Empires of the Word': 'It is a compelling read, one of the most interesting books I have read in a long while!a great book. After reading it you will never think of language in the same way again.' Guardian 'Learned and entertaining!remarkably comprehensive as well as thought-provoking.' Observer 'Ostler is particularly good on this linguistic fragility!This richly various book offers new insights and information for almost everyone interested in the past.' Sunday Telegraph 'A serious work of scholarship, but one that can be read from cover to cover by the amateur enthusiast!the breadth of this analysis is breathtaking!it does its job admirably.' Spectator 'Ambitious and well-researched.' New Statesman
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- PublisherWalker Books
- Publication date2008
- ISBN 10 0802716792
- ISBN 13 9780802716798
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages400
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