Språk: historia och allmänt

*A GUARDIAN, NEW STATESMAN, PROSPECT AND WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2025* 'The fascinating story of ancient words … new revelations await' The Guardian 'A magisterial feat' New Scientist ________________________________ One ancient language transformed our world. This is its story. Star. Stjarna. Stare. Thousands of miles apart, people look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see.Listen to these English, Icelandic and Iranic words and you can hear echoes of one of the most extraordinary journeys in humanity’s past. All three of these languages – and hundreds more – share a single ancient ancestor.Five millennia ago, in a mysterious Big Bang of its own, this proto tongue exploded, forming new worlds as it spread east and west. Today, nearly half of humanity speaks an Indo-European language. How did this happen?In Proto, acclaimed journalist Laura Spinney sets off to find out. With her we travel the length of the steppe, navigating the Caucasus, the Silk Roads and the Hindu Kush. We follow in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings – the ancient peoples who spread these tongues far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the linguists, archaeologists and geneticists racing to recover this lost world. What they have discovered has vital lessons for our modern age, as people and their languages are on the move again.Proto is a revelatory portrait of world history in its own words.

Fröet till det svenska språket såddes för 5 000 år sedan, i området kring Svarta havet. Men det var först på 1300-talet som svenskan fick sin roll som ett eget språk, kopplat till nationen. Sedan dess har det utvecklats i nära samspel med landet där det talats och skrivits.

Genom att studera texter skrivna av kungligheter, lärarinnor, kanslister eller vetenskapsmän kan vi förstå hur språket användes – och hur människorna bakom orden tänkte och levde. Lingvisten Tore Janson visar i denna bok hur svenskans historia därmed också är en viktig del av Sveriges historia.

Med djup kunskap och pedagogisk blick lotsar han oss genom åtta sekler och öppnar dörrar till olika tider och språkformer.

Följ med på en lärd och underhållande resa från runskrifternas tidevarv till dagens digitala svenska!

Sail in on a shrimp sandwich and other curious Swedish sayings Every country has them culturally unique expressions that bring colour to everyday language and provoke a laugh or two in literal translation. Swedish contains all manner of weird and wonderful sayings, many without obvious equivalents in English. Here we roll out some of the funniest and learn a little about their origins and usage you ll never get caught buying a pig in a sack again!

Ny upplaga med 30 nya uttryck! Kan man ha is i magen? Och glida på en räkmackaInget av dessa uttryck bör tolkas bokstavligt. Det­samma gäller den uppsjö av uttryck som vi till vardags slänger ur oss utan att egentligen tänka på vad vi säger. Alla uttryck har ett ursprung: många härrör från det gamla bondesamhället, några från sagor och fabler, och de allra flesta har sitt ursprung i Bibeln Kasta yxan i sjön, fara fram som ett Jehu och dansa efter någons pipa är bara några exempel. Vem kan då skapa ett nytt uttryck i språket? Sva­ret är: vem som helst! Den här boken tar i bokstavsordning upp drygt 200 av våra vanligaste svenska uttryck med dess betydelse och ursprung. Man får även veta i vilka språk motsvarande uttryck finns, och vad man sä­ger då. Följ med på en spännande upptäcktsresa i vårt språk. Kerstin Johanson har tidigare gett ut ett stort antal böcker, bl a Engelska uttryck och Ordbok för tänkare samt citatserien Bra citat om...

The Renaissance is one of the most studied and celebrated eras of history. Spanning the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of modernity, it has come to symbolise the transformative rebirth of knowledge, art, culture and political thought in Europe. And for the last two hundred years, historians have struggled to describe what makes this famous golden age unique.In Inventing the Renaissance, acclaimed historian Ada Palmer provides a fresh perspective on what makes this epoch so captivating. Her witty and irreverent journey through the fantasies historians have constructed about the period show how its legend derives more from later centuries’ mythmaking than from the often grim reality of the period itself. She examines its defining figures and movements: the enduring legacy of Niccolò Machiavelli, the rediscovery of the classics, the rise of the Medici and fall of the Borgias, the astonishing artistic achievements of Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Cellini, the impact of the Inquisition and the expansion of secular Humanism. Palmer also explores the ties between culture and money: books, for example, could cost as much as grand houses, so the period’s innovative thinkers could only thrive with the help of the super-rich. She offers fifteen provocative and entertaining character portraits of Renaissance men and women, some famous, some obscure, whose intersecting lives show how the real Renaissance was more unexpected, more international and, above all, more desperate than its golden reputation suggests.Drawing on her popular blogs and writing with her characteristic energy and wit, Palmer presents the Renaissance as we have never seen it before. Colloquial, funny and brilliant, you would never expect a work of deep scholarship to make you alternately laugh and cry.

'Moving, beautiful and important' FINANCIAL TIMES, BEST SUMMER BOOKS 2026 'Punchy and persuasive' SUNDAY TIMES As Sophia Smith Galer’s Nonna lay dying, she realised it wasn’t just a beloved grandmother she was losing – it was the language she spoke, too. From Northern Italy, she spoke a dialët that Sophia, like so many children and grandchildren of migrants, can understand but can’t speak. With the death of the language, Sophia would lose a culture, a history, an inheritance – a whole world.This tragedy reaches far beyond her family. Globally we are witnessing an unprecedented mass extinction event. By the end of this century half of the world’s 7000 languages will be gone, killed by war, climate breakdown, migration, nationalism or neglect, along with the vital knowledge that they have sustained for centuries.Award-winning journalist Smith Galer has journeyed across continents and generations to report from this disappearing world. From Ghana to Greece, Ecuador to Oman, California to the UK, she meets people experiencing this loss at first hand – but also campaigners and linguists who prove that a multilingual future is still possible. Her travels ultimately lead her back to where she began: to Italy, and the tiny mountainside village where the church bells still ring out for her Nonna.How to Kill a Language is an impassioned investigation into a hidden global crisis, and a call to speak, read and write the languages of our world, before it’s too late. 'An extremely moving, passionate plea' CAL FLYN 'Everyone should read this book' OLIA HERCULES

'Moving, beautiful and important' FINANCIAL TIMES, BEST SUMMER BOOKS 2026 'Punchy and persuasive' SUNDAY TIMES As Sophia Smith Galer’s Nonna lay dying, she realised it wasn’t just a beloved grandmother she was losing – it was the language she spoke, too. From Northern Italy, she spoke a dialët that Sophia, like so many children and grandchildren of migrants, can understand but can’t speak. With the death of the language, Sophia would lose a culture, a history, an inheritance – a whole world.This tragedy reaches far beyond her family. Globally we are witnessing an unprecedented mass extinction event. By the end of this century half of the world’s 7000 languages will be gone, killed by war, climate breakdown, migration, nationalism or neglect, along with the vital knowledge that they have sustained for centuries.Award-winning journalist Smith Galer has journeyed across continents and generations to report from this disappearing world. From Ghana to Greece, Ecuador to Oman, California to the UK, she meets people experiencing this loss at first hand – but also campaigners and linguists who prove that a multilingual future is still possible. Her travels ultimately lead her back to where she began: to Italy, and the tiny mountainside village where the church bells still ring out for her Nonna.How to Kill a Language is an impassioned investigation into a hidden global crisis, and a call to speak, read and write the languages of our world, before it’s too late. 'An extremely moving, passionate plea' CAL FLYN 'Everyone should read this book' OLIA HERCULES

A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year 2019‘Richly evocative and entertaining.’ – Guardian‘A delightful read.’ – Tatler‘An essential book for anyone who wants to Polari Bona!’ – AttitudePolari is a language that was used chiefly by gay men in the first half of the twentieth century. It offered its speakers a degree of public camouflage and a means of identification. Its colourful roots are varied – from Cant to Lingua Franca to dancers’ slang – and in the mid-1960s it was thrust into the limelight by the characters Julian and Sandy, voiced by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams, on the BBC radio show Round the Horne. (‘Oh hello Mr Horne, how bona to vada your dolly old eek!’) Paul Baker recounts the story of Polari with skill, humour and tenderness. He traces its historical origins and describes its linguistic nuts and bolts, explores the ways and the environments in which it was spoken, explains the reasons for its decline and tells of its unlikely re-emergence in the twenty-first century. With a cast of drag queens and sailors, Dilly boys and macho clones, Fabulosa! is an essential document of recent history – a fascinating and fantastically readable account of this funny, filthy and ingenious language.

»En engagerande och högaktuell studie av vad som drev historiens mest inflytelserika civilisationer... En underhållande och lärorik läsning för alla som är intresserade av de krafter som formar civilisationers utveckling.« Financial TimesGuldåldrar kännetecknas av perioder av spektakulär kulturell blomstring, vetenskapliga upptäckter, teknologiska framsteg och ekonomisk tillväxt – men ingen har varit den andra lik. Deras idéer, samhällen och plats i den större världen skiljer dem åt. Men alla tidigare guldåldrar har tagit slut – antingen på grund av yttre påfrestningar eller inre splittring, för mycket högmod eller för lite vaksamhet.Genom att studera sju av mänsklighetens främsta civilisationer – det antika Aten, den romerska republiken, Abbasidkalifatet i Bagdad, Songdynastins Kina, renässansens Italien, 1500-talets Nederländerna och den anglosaxiska världen – försöker Johan Norberg identifiera deras styrkor och brister för att besvara frågan: Hur kan vi säkerställa att vår nuvarande guldålder inte tar slut?Civilisationens topp är lika insiktsfull som fängslande – en hyllning till vår otroliga utveckling och en varning om att vi inte har råd att bli självbelåtna. »Kan en historiebok vara mer aktuell?« The Economist»En exemplarisk bok presenterad med oklanderlig tydlighet. Norberg skriver som vanliga människor talar och har en mästerlig kontroll över en häpnadsväckande mängd information. Mycket övertygande – och en verklig läsglädje.« The Irish Independent om Civilisationens topp»Johan Norbergs Peak Human är verkligen en briljant bok. Den är seriös och samtidigt rolig att läsa. Den gjorde mig smartare – och den kan mycket väl göra detsamma för dig.« Tom G Palmer om Civilisationens topp»Ingen person och inget samhälle har tillräcklig begåvning, vishet eller nobless för att på egen hand lösa livets svåra problem. Med klarhet och elegans påminner Johan Norberg oss om att öppenhet inför andra människors idéer och perspektiv är den enda vägen till välmående.« Steven Pinker om Öppen/Sluten»Johan Norberg ger en gripande exposé av hur fria marknader har lagt grunden för mänskligt välstånd – och hur de kan fortsätta att göra det.« Financial Times om Det kapitalistiska manifestet JOHAN NORBERG är idéhistoriker, författare och föreläsare. Hans böcker, som har översatts till över trettio språk, inkluderar Det kapitalistiska manifestet, den internationella bästsäljaren Framsteg och Öppen/Sluten, som utsågs till en av årets böcker av The Economist. Norberg är senior fellow vid Cato Institute i Washington, D.C., och skriver regelbundet för publikationer som The Wall Street Journal, Reason och The Spectator.

Vad rymmer det svenska ordförrådet? Hur hänger orden ihop med hur vi tänker?Boken bjuder på en upptäcktsfärd genom språket, ger oss verktyg att hantera det med och öppnar våra sinnen för den stora ordglädjen.Här kan du som läsare ta dig fram bland synonymer och metaforer, tillverka nya eller återupptäcka mycket gamla ord, prova ut liknelser och mycket annat.Ordförrådet är en slösande rik och generös bok som visar vägen till ordförrådets alla vinklar och vrår. Läs Ordförrådet från pärm till pärm eller använd den som idébok för utforskning och experiment. Gör det på egen hand eller tillsammans med andra.Ordförrådet är en bok att ständigt ha till hands för den som vill ha ett ord med i laget.Nu i efterlängtad nyutgåva.

"Guy Deutscher is that rare beast, an academic who talks good sense about linguistics... he argues in a playful and provocative way, that our mother tongue does indeed affect how we think and, just as important, how we perceive the world." Observer*Does language reflect the culture of a society? *Is our mother-tongue a lens through which we perceive the world? *Can different languages lead their speakers to different thoughts? In Through the Language Glass, acclaimed author Guy Deutscher will convince you that, contrary to the fashionable academic consensus of today, the answer to all these questions is - yes. A delightful amalgam of cultural history and popular science, this book explores some of the most fascinating and controversial questions about language, culture and the human mind.

Now in its third edition, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language provides the most comprehensive coverage of the history, structure and worldwide use of English. Fully updated and expanded, with a fresh redesigned layout, and over sixty audio resources to bring language extracts to life, it covers all aspects of the English language including the history of English, with new pages on Shakespeare's vocabulary and pronunciation, updated statistics on global English use that now cover all countries and the future of English in a post-Brexit Europe, regional and social variations, with fresh insights into the growing cultural identities of 'new Englishes', English in everyday use with new sections on gender identities, forensic studies, and 'big data' in corpus linguistics, and digital developments, including the emergence of new online varieties in social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp. Packed with brand new colour illustrations, photographs, maps, tables and graphs, this new edition is an essential tool for a new generation of twenty-first-century English language enthusiasts.

An intimate memoir portraying a life spent trying to describe the indescribable—from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist of The Hours and Day. Go ahead. Try using language to slit the skin of mortality to see what’s on the other side. At the age of three, Michael Cunningham began obsessively collecting the names of things: oak, Chevrolet, finch, tulip, Tupperware… Each word rendered the world ever so slightly more understandable, more describable, kicking off a lifelong love affair with language—one that would, eventually, maybe inevitably, lead him to become a writer.In Unsayable, Cunningham’s memories spill forth, and with them, reflections on the craft of writing. He is fifteen, in a swimming pool at night, gazing at the first boy he ever fell in love with, who is lost in contemplative silence. He is a new college graduate, setting off for nowhere in a Dodge Dart, hoping to pull meaning (and a novel) from the expanse of America. He is on Cape Cod, regaling an elderly couple with invented tales of sexual escapades. He is in an art gallery, unwittingly having the first in a lifetime of conversations with the man he would marry. A thread ties each beautifully-wrought moment to the next: what is unspoken, what won’t yield to language, what is embellished beyond recognition, what is still left to say.Luminous, perceptive and powerful, Unsayable is an ode to literature, a meditation on craft and an intimate account of a life spent trying to put into words that which resists depiction. This, it turns out, is the lifeblood of the fiction writer: the impossibility of capturing the human experience, and the relentless desire to try.

The English language is spoken by more than a billion people throughout the world. But where did English come from? And how has it evolved into the language used today?In this Very Short Introduction Simon Horobin investigates how we have arrived at the English we know today, and celebrates the way new speakers and new uses mean that it continues to adapt. Engaging with contemporary concerns about correctness, Horobin considers whether such changes are improvements, or evidence of slipping standards. What is the future for the English language? Will Standard English continue to hold sway, or we are witnessing its replacement by newly emerging Englishes?ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

An “adventure tale for puzzle lovers and Indiana Jones fans alike” (The Washington Post) following three free-spirited Victorians on their twenty-year quest to decipher cuneiform, the oldest writing in the world—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu.It was one of history’s great vanishing acts. Around 3,400 BCE, a scribe in the mud-walled city-state of Uruk picked up a reed stylus to press tiny symbols into clay. For the next three thousand years, wedge-shape cuneiform script would record the military conquests, scientific discoveries, and epic literature of the great kingdoms of Mesopotamia. And then…the meaning of the characters was lost. London, 1857. In an era obsessed with human progress, mysterious palaces emerging from the desert sands have captured the Victorian public’s imagination. Assyria, Babylon, the mighty Persian Empire… these civilizations had gone down in the annals as the great antagonists to ancient Greece and ancient Israel. What did these “bad guys” of Western history have to say for themselves? What were their values, their rituals, their understandings of their place in the universe? What was it like simply to be human at the dawn of recorded history? Enter a swashbuckling archaeologist, a suave military officer turned diplomat, and a cloistered Irish rector, all vying for glory in a race to decipher the script that would enable humans to peer farther back into our history than ever before. From the ruins of Persepolis to lawless outposts of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, let The Mesopotamian Riddle whisk you off on “an epic intellectual adventure” (The Wall Street Journal) through the golden age of archaeology in an epic quest to understand where we came from—and where we perhaps might go.

LONGLISTED FOR THE HISTORICAL WRITERS' ASSOCIATION NON-FICTION CROWNA SUNDAY TIMES NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR'Timely ... a long and engrossing survey of the library' FT'A sweeping, absorbing history, deeply researched' Richard Ovenden, author of Burning the BooksFamed across the known world, jealously guarded by private collectors, built up over centuries, destroyed in a single day, ornamented with gold leaf and frescoes or filled with bean bags and children's drawings - the history of the library is rich, varied and stuffed full of incident.In this, the first major history of its kind, Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen explore the contested and dramatic history of the library, from the famous collections of the ancient world to the embattled public resources we cherish today. Along the way, they introduce us to the antiquarians and philanthropists who shaped the world's great collections, trace the rise and fall of fashions and tastes, and reveal the high crimes and misdemeanours committed in pursuit of rare and valuable manuscripts.

Denna mycket omtyckta kommer nu i en nyutgåva.Språkets nära koppling till vardagslivet gör att de flesta har åsikter om det, men hur är det egentligen - vad är fakta och vad är myt? Är en kärring någon man håller kär? Finns order lagom bara i svenskan? Har eskimåerna så många fler ord för snö än vad vi har? Hotas det svenska språket av invandringen? Har engelskan fler ord än svenskan? Detta och mycket mer klarar Mikael Parkvall ut i "Lagom finns bara i Sverige". Trots sin akademiska utgångspunkt tar sig Parkvall an ämnet på ett lättsamt och humoristiskt sätt. En mycket välskriven och läsvärd bok!"Lärorikt som det är, är detta också bland de mest lättlästa och underhållande bidragen till språkvetenskaplig allmänbildning som man kan föreställa sig" Arthur Holmer, BTJ "Den är skriven med mycket humor och mycket sakkunskap" Ingalill Mosander, SVT:s Gokväll"Frejdigt och roligt" Bo Löfvendahl, SvD"Parkvalls bok är värd stor spridning" Knut Warmland, Värmlands Folkblad

Are you curious to know what all languages have in common and how they differ? Do you want to find out how language can be used to trace different peoples and their past? Now in its fourth edition, this fascinating book guides beginners through the rich diversity of the world's languages. It presupposes no background in linguistics, and introduces key concepts with the help of problem sets, end-of-chapter exercises and an extensive bibliography. It is illustrated with detailed maps and charts of language families throughout, and engaging sidebars and 'food for thought' boxes contextualise and bring the languages to life with demographic, social, historical, and geographical facts. This edition has been extensively updated with a new section on the languages of the Caribbean, new problem sets, and an updated glossary and index. Supplementary online materials includes links to all websites mentioned, and answers to the exercises for instructors.

Vad heter du? Den frågan har du fått många gånger.Men varför heter du? Den frågan har du kanske inte tänkt på så ofta. Hur kommer det sig att du över huvud taget har ett namn, och varför ser det ut som det gör? Det vill Sverker Johansson berätta om i denna underhållande och tanke­väckande bok. Med blick för såväl de stora utvecklings­linjerna som för de kuriösa exemplen rör han sig mellan alla tider och platser för att fånga in namntraditionernas mångfald.

Beroende på var vi hamnar i tid och rum kan ett för­namn bestämmas utifrån veckodag, förfäder, vilka onda andar som ska luras eller vad modern ser när barnet föds. Förutom förnamn kan vi ha efternamn – men också föräld­ranamn, gårdsnamn, bynamn, barnnamn, kastnamn, mel­lannamn, generationsnamn eller tillnamn baserade på allt från lyten via yrken till tv-program. Visste du till exempel att Caligula betyder barnstövlar, att John är det vanligaste förnamnet på Wikipedia, att delfiner har namnmelodier och att Mao Zedongs mellannamn Ze kommer från en dikt som hans släkt i fjorton generationer hämtade namn ur?

Mycket pekar på att vi bär namn inte så mycket för att kunna tilltalas som för att kunna omtalas…

"Denna historiska rundvandring är både lärorik och väl genomförd."Fokus

"Sverker Johanssons bok Hur var namnet? plockar fram något som är så vardagligt att vi knappt tänker på det och gör det ytterst intressant och spännande."BTJ

From the bestselling author of Alex's Adventures in Numberland and Can You Solve My Problems? comes a fascinating, hugely entertaining collection of puzzles for crossword addicts and language-lovers of all stripes. 'The only puzzle book I've seen that manages to befuddle both sides of the brain at the same time.'DARA Ó BRIAIN'Such fun, full of unexpected ideas and charmingly written.'TIM HARFORDThe Language Lover's Puzzle Book is a book of more than 100 surprising and entertaining puzzles that celebrate the amazing diversity of the world of words and language.Featuring a huge variety of ancient, modern and even invented languages, this collection of problems will introduce you to unusual alphabets and scripts, curious vocabularies and phonologies, and global variations in simple behaviours like counting, telling the time, and naming children.Whether you are a crossword solver, a code-breaker or a Scrabble addict, these puzzles are guaranteed to twist your tongue and sharpen your mind.'Alex Bellos is a dazzling polymath whose cleverness and ingenuity are on full display in this utterly brilliant and original collection of linguistic puzzles. This book is destined to be a classic for puzzle lovers.'JOSHUA FOER, co-founder of Atlas Obscura and author Moonwalking with Einstein'An irresistible linguistic workout - challenging and deeply satisfying.'GASTON DORREN, author of Lingo and Babel'For all the language and puzzle fans in your life!' GRETCHEN McCULLOCH'A cornucopia of ingenious and insightful challenges.' DAVID CRYSTAL'This compendium of puzzles is a great idea.' MICHAEL ROSEN'You'll love what Alex Bellos has done here.' GYLES BRANDRETH'Tantalisting.' THE ECONOMIST'The perfect way to pass the time.' BBC SCIENCE FOCUS

Ibland dyker det upp uttryck som kanske känns främmande för att de inte används så ofta, som att någon persons svaga punkt är dennes akilleshäl är något som många känner till. Men varifrån kommer det uttrycket och en del andra uttryck, kanske mindre kända, som ibland dyker upp. Här får vi på ett pedagogisk sätt reda på bakgrunden till dem och när de används. Boken sammanfattar tolv berättelser ur den grekiska mytologin relaterade till just de uttryck vi ibland använder oss av. Berättelserna är vackert illustrerade av akvareller.Den andra delen av boken, inspirerad av berättelserna, reflekterar över likheterna i våra olika världskulturer samt några filosofiska principer bakom dessa uttryck.

'More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to...'Only Bill Bryson could make a book about the English language so entertaining. With his boundless enthusiasm and restless eye for the absurd, this is his astonishing tour of English. From its mongrel origins to its status as the world's most-spoken tongue; its apparent simplicity to its deceptive complexity; its vibrant swearing to its uncertain spelling and pronunciation, Bryson covers all this as well as the many curious eccentricities that make it as maddening to learn as it is flexible to use. Bill Bryson's classic Mother Tongue is a highly readable and hilarious tale of how English came to be the world's language.

*A GUARDIAN, NEW STATESMAN, PROSPECT AND WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2025* 'The fascinating story of ancient words … new revelations await' The Guardian 'A magisterial feat' New Scientist ________________________________ One ancient language transformed our world. This is its story. Star. Stjarna. Stare. Thousands of miles apart, people look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see.Listen to these English, Icelandic and Iranic words and you can hear echoes of one of the most extraordinary journeys in humanity’s past. All three of these languages – and hundreds more – share a single ancient ancestor.Five millennia ago, in a mysterious Big Bang of its own, this proto tongue exploded, forming new worlds as it spread east and west. Today, nearly half of humanity speaks an Indo-European language. How did this happen?In Proto, acclaimed journalist Laura Spinney sets off to find out. With her we travel the length of the steppe, navigating the Caucasus, the Silk Roads and the Hindu Kush. We follow in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings – the ancient peoples who spread these tongues far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the linguists, archaeologists and geneticists racing to recover this lost world. What they have discovered has vital lessons for our modern age, as people and their languages are on the move again.Proto is a revelatory portrait of world history in its own words.

*A GUARDIAN, NEW STATESMAN, PROSPECT AND WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2025* 'The fascinating story of ancient words … new revelations await' The Guardian 'A magisterial feat' New Scientist ________________________________ One ancient language transformed our world. This is its story. Star. Stjarna. Stare. Thousands of miles apart, people look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see.Listen to these English, Icelandic and Iranic words and you can hear echoes of one of the most extraordinary journeys in humanity’s past. All three of these languages – and hundreds more – share a single ancient ancestor.Five millennia ago, in a mysterious Big Bang of its own, this proto tongue exploded, forming new worlds as it spread east and west. Today, nearly half of humanity speaks an Indo-European language. How did this happen?In Proto, acclaimed journalist Laura Spinney sets off to find out. With her we travel the length of the steppe, navigating the Caucasus, the Silk Roads and the Hindu Kush. We follow in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings – the ancient peoples who spread these tongues far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the linguists, archaeologists and geneticists racing to recover this lost world. What they have discovered has vital lessons for our modern age, as people and their languages are on the move again.Proto is a revelatory portrait of world history in its own words.

'A fiendishly good read!'Mignon Fogarty, Grammar GirlThe English language is where words go to be tortured and mutilated into unrecognizable shadows of their former selves. It's where Latin, Greek, and Germanic roots are shredded apart and stitched unceremoniously back together with misunderstood snippets of languages snatched from the wreckage of conquest and colonialism. It wreaks merciless havoc upon grammar and spelling. It turns clinical terms into insults and children's tales into filthy euphemisms.With an emphasis on understanding where the foulest words in the English language came from-and the disgusting and hilarious histories behind them-this book demonstrates the true filth of our everyday words. But this book is more than just a list of vulgar words and salacious slang. It's a thoughtful analysis of why we deem words as being inappropriate as well as revealing 'good words' that have surprisingly naughty origins.Dirty-minded word nerds and lewd linguistics lovers will derive unadulterated pleasure in leering at the origins of swear words, sexual lingo, inappropriate idioms, violent vocabulary, and terminology for bodily functions-not to mention the unexpectedly foul origins of words you thought were perfectly innocent. If it's inappropriate, stomach-churning, uncomfortable, or offensive, this book reaches into the dark recesses of history and exposes them for all to see.True to the Chambers brand, this book combines humour, scholarly research and a beautiful design. It is a book to enjoy, collect and revisit time and time again.

Ancient Greek lives on in our culture in surprising ways. Sometimes funny - the word for an actor, hupokrites, gives us ‘hypocrite’; sometimes beautiful - an astronaut is literally a sailor of the skies. And that’s before we get to the myths which gave us our Achilles heel or our Midas Touch. And what about crocodile tears, which comes from the Greek’s belief that crocodiles cried while eating their victims!This is a learned but always entertaining journey through the world of the Ancient Greeks, their extraordinary language and how it has shaped our own understanding of the world today. After all, what is language but the frame through which we understand the world? Davie aims to bring more than just humour, he seeks to trace the thread of ancient Greek thought that runs through our own civilization, always with the lightness of touch and fascinating etymology. We meet Eros and Aphrodite, Alexander the Great and Oscar Wilde, the stoics, Epicurus and Sparta.While this is a book about language and the touching and illuminating presence of the ancient Greeks in our current words, it’s also about how Ancient Greece shapes our culture today.

An unusual and authoritative 'natural history of languages' that narrates the ways in which one language has superseded or outlasted another at different times in history.The story of the world in the last five thousand years is above all the story of its languages. Some shared language is what binds any community together, and makes possible both the living of a common history and the telling of it.Yet the history of the world’s great languages has rarely been examined. ‘Empires of the Word’ is the first to bring together the tales in all their glorious variety: the amazing innovations – in education, culture and diplomacy – devised by speakers in the Middle East; the uncanny resilience of Chinese throughout twenty centuries of invasions; the progress of Sanskrit from north India to Java and Japan; the struggle that gave birth to the languages of modern Europe; and the global spread of English.Besides these epic achievements, language failures are equally fascinating: why did Germany get left behind? Why did Egyptian, which had survived foreign takeovers for three millennia, succumb to Mohammed’s Arabic? Why is Dutch unknown in modern Indonesia, given that the Netherlands had ruled the East Indies for as long as the British ruled India?As this book engagingly reveals, the language history of the world shows eloquently the real characters of peoples; it also shows that the language of the future will, like the languages of the past, be full of surprises.

Sociolinguistics is the study of the interaction between language and society. In this classic introductory work, Janet Holmes and Nick Wilson examine the role of language in a variety of social contexts, considering both how language works and how it can be used to signal and interpret various aspects of social identity. Divided into three parts, this book explains basic sociolinguistic concepts in the light of classic approaches, as well as introducing more recent research.This sixth edition has been revised and updated throughout, using key concepts and examples to guide the reader through this fascinating area, including:• New material on gender, social media and online use of language, codeswitching, and language policy• An updated companion website that is fully cross- referenced within this book and features video and audio materials and links to useful websites• Revised examples and exercises that include new material from Asia and South America• Fully updated further reading and references sectionsAn Introduction to Sociolinguistics is an essential introductory text for all students of sociolinguistics and a splendid point of reference for students of English language studies, linguistics, and applied linguistics.