The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language by John H. McWhorter

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
In this lively, conversational narrative on the natural history of language, Berkeley linguistics professor John McWhorter contends that the roots of language can be traced back 150,000 years, as part of an organic evolution that continues to the present day. Although the book is based on McWhorter's scholarly research, he gives illustrative examples that enable the lay reader to say, "Hmmm. I get that." For example consider the word "bye." As recently as a few centuries ago, English speakers were still aware that "goodbye" was a "rebracketed" version of "God be with you" -- this phrase underwent a number of derivative shortenings, all cited by McWhorter, until it became "Be with you," of which "bye" is a truncated form. The five processes of change -- sound change, extension, the evolution of concrete words into pieces of grammar, rebracketing, and semantic change -- are as natural to language as photosynthesis is to plants and breathing is to animals. On the subject of dialects, McWhorter argues that despite the almost irresistible pull of social evaluation, there is no such thing as human beings using "bad grammar."

In the chapter "The Origins of Our Sense of 'Educated Speech' " the author uses as an example a speech given by the minister and congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. to illustrate the power of redundancy, which is frequently employed in religious or other inspirational contexts. In Powell's speech, God speaks in turn to Moses, David, and Jesus, saying to each, "What's in your hand?" Finally, it is Jesus who replies, "I've got two nails in my hand, Father, I stretch my hands to thee, no other help I know, if thou withdraw thyself from me, wither shall I go?" The repetition of "What's in your hand?," McWhorter writes, demonstrates the "obvious wholeness and legitimacy of Powell's utterance despite its flouting of what we are taught as the 'rules' of 'good English.' " He goes on to mention that Powell's speech is representative of the aesthetic patterns that spoken language takes in all of the world's societies.

The author concludes, "Human language is to some extent genetically coded and language is not just a conditioned skill." There is an urgency to preserve as many languages as possible before they disappear so that, even if they are not spoken anymore, we have their heritage available to us. McWhorter has created a powerful footprint in the sands of languages and dialects, their cultures, how they are derived, and most likely where they will end up -- his book offers a fascinating glimpse into the ever-changing process of human communication. (Evie Rhodes)

From the Publisher

There are approximately 6000 languages on earth today, the descendants of the tongue first spoken by homo sapiens some 150,000 years ago. How did they all develop? What happened to the first language?
In this irreverent romp through territory too often claimed by stodgy grammarians, McWhorter ranges across linguistic theory, geography, history, and pop culture to tell the fascinating story of how thousands of very different languages have evolved from a single, original source in a natural process similar to biological evolution. While laying out how languages mix and mutate over time, he reminds us of the variety within the species that speaks them, and argues that, contrary to popular perception, language is not immutable and hidebound, but a living, dynamic entity that adapts itself to an ever-changing human environment.
Full of humor and imaginative insight, The Power of Babel draws its examples from languages around the world, including pidgins, creoles, patois and nonstandard dialects. McWhorter also discusses current theories on what the first language might have been like, why dialects should not be considered "bad speech" and why most of today's languages will be extinct in 100 years.
The first book written for the layperson about the natural history of language, Power of Babel is a dazzling tour de force that will leave readers anything but speechless.

Library Journal

Starting with the well-known model of relationships among languages as a family tree, McWhorter (linguistics, Berkeley) fleshes out and refines this model as he narrates development of language. He explores five main ways that languages change, such as sound change and the transformation of words into pieces of grammar. McWhorter further illuminates and compares concepts of dialect, pidgin, and Creole to demonstrate the changing nature of language. Through the discussion, he replaces the family-tree model of language relations with the more sophisticated images of a bush and a net. Numerous examples support each point, including cartoons illustrating German dialects. Indeed, the sheer weight of all the examples and detailed discussion could discourage an initially curious reader. While McWhorter reaches out to general readers by avoiding jargon and using an informal tone, brevity is needed to reach the maximum audience. Steven Fisher offers a narrative language history in History of Language (Reaktion, 1999), but while Fisher presents a slightly briefer account, it is also far more technical, with an emphasis on evolutionary theory. Not an essential purchase, McWhorter's work is recommended only for public libraries with large language collections. Marianne Orme, Des Plaines P.L., IL Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A Berkeley linguist conducts a learned, lively tour through the lush garden of human languages. McWhorter (Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, 2000, etc.) begins with a childhood shock of recognition: Hearing a little girl speaking Hebrew, he suddenly realized that English was not the only language in the world. "This," he writes, "was the beginning of a lifelong obsession with foreign languages." He estimates that the first language, from which all other languages descend, emerged about 150,000 years ago in Africa. Since then, many thousands of languages have arisen, fallen, and died. Today, there are some 6,000 varieties around the globe, although 96 percent of the world's population speaks one of the "top twenty," and many surviving tongues are in imminent danger of demise. McWhorter explains how so many languages could have developed from a common ancestor and assails the popular notion that this "proto-language" could be reconstructed. Discussing pidgins and creoles, he dismisses such common misconceptions as the belief that English is somehow more "adaptable" than other languages because it borrows many of its words; so do many other languages spoken by people who have lots of contact with lots of other people. Other news: Dialects (like "Black English") developed in parallel with standard, written forms and are not merely ungrammatical versions of their more elegant cousins; in many languages, double negatives are common, and distinctions between past and perfect tenses are rare; so-called "primitive" languages spoken by hunter-gatherers today are no simpler than French or Chinese-in fact, they are often more complicated. With a brisk, witty style that reveals acomprehensive knowledge of music and popular culture, McWhorter rarely lets his tour wander into the tangled wood of academic jargon and arcane illustration. An entertaining, instructive Henry Higgins of a volume: it'll transform readers into enraptured Eliza Doolittles.

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