Why Do Languages Change?

by R.L. Trask, Robert McColl Millar (Revision)

The first recorded English name for the make-up we now call blusher was paint, in 1660. In the 1700s a new word, rouge, displaced paint, and remained in standard usage for around two centuries. Then, in 1965, an advertisement coined a new word for the product: blusher. Each generation speaks a little differently, and every language is constantly changing. It is not only words that change, every aspect of a language changes over time - pronunciation, word-meanings and grammar. Packed with fascinating examples of changes in the English language over time, this entertaining book explores the origin of words and place names, the differences between British and American English, and the apparent eccentricities of the English spelling system. Amusingly written yet deeply instructive, it will be enjoyed by anyone involved in studying the English language and its history, as well as anyone interested in how and why languages change.

Genres: Linguistics, Nonfiction

212 pages, Unknown Binding

First published December 24, 2009

About the author

Robert Lawrence "Larry" Trask was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sussex in England. He was an authority on the Basque language: his book The History of Basque (1997) is an essential reference on diachronic Basque linguistics and probably the best introduction to Basque linguistics as a whole. He was also an authority on historical linguistics, and had written about the problem of the origin of language. He also published two introductory books to linguistics: Language: The basics (1995) and Introducing Linguistics (coauthored with Bill Mayblin) (2000), and several dictionaries on different topics of this science: A dictionary of grammatical terms in linguistics (1993), A dictionary of phonetics and phonology (1996), A student's dictionary of language and linguistics (1997), Key concepts in language and linguistics (1999), The dictionary of historical and comparative linguistics (2000) and The Penguin dictionary of English grammar (2000).

He was at work compiling an etymological dictionary of Basque when he died, posthumously published by Max W. Wheeler (Etymological Dictionary of Basque, 2008).

Reviews

[Mohammed Gh · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب جيد لكنه مركز على اللغة الإنجليزية

[Israa Laidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was the first to introduce me to the huge world of "language" and its philosophy. It doesn't afford you answers as much as it affords you questions ! Reading it again with an insightful eye brought me some thoughts that I missed at the 1st read...
What a remarkable tool our language is !

[Vidya · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the few unbiased books on language change I've read so far. As the author himself says lots of books emphasize the supremacy of one language over the other. So it's a refreshing change to hear a declaration such as there is no oldest language and that all languages evolve over time

[إبراهيم · Rating 3 out of 5]

العنوان مظلل نوعا ما، فقد يتصور انه يناقش موضوع تغير اللغة على نطلق واسع لكن في الحقيقة كان محصور على اللغة الانجليزية، وفي بعض النقاط يأتي بأمثلة من مختلف اللغات في العالم، الكتاب إجمالاً جيد والترجمة لا بأس بها كذلك.

[Marusa]

I had to read a part of this for class and it was great. I hope to finish it at a later date

[Pablo K. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the book, i think the colloquiallism finally damaged the book a bit, but I think it is a good intro.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Larry Trask was a widely respected linguist, an expert on Basque and on the way languages change over time. WHY DO LANGUAGES CHANGE is an introduction to language and history meant for a wide audience with no prior training in linguistics. It was left unfinished when Trask died in 2004, but it was revised by Robert McColl Millar and published six years later.

HOW DO LANGUAGES change is divided into seven chapters based on common questions: 1) How do languages change? 2) Why are languages always changing? 3) Where do words come from? 4) Skunk-Leek - my kind of town: what's in a name? 5) Where does English come from? 6) Why is American English different from British English? 7) Why is English spelling so eccentric? 8) Which is the oldest language?

Trask answers these questions with a great deal of trivia. English examples are drawn almost entirely from US English and British English (Australian English gets brief mention in the chapter on placenames), so residents of those two countries are the intended audience of the book. There are also examples from many other languages around the world, and Trask even discusses the rise of pidgin and creole languages. Trask was known for his sense of humour, and I think his tone here is often friendly and not drily academic.

The most prominent book with this kind of approach is Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue, which appallingly has factual errors and misunderstandings on every page. There is a real need for a introduction accessible to the general public, but written by someone who actually knows what he is talking about. To a degree, HOW LANGUAGES CHANGE will prove informative.

Unfortunately, I don't think Trask's book is ideal. He doesn't explain the technique that helps linguists reconstruct ancestral languages, the so-called "comparative method". There is an index entry for "comparative method", but on the page referred to, that term is not found. Consequently, I fear that Trask's listing of reconstructed Proto-Indo-European terms is likely to seem voodoo science to most laymen. Furthermore, Trask's answer to the last question ("No language is 'older' than any other language, and there is no 'oldest' language") comes after such a long and convoluted explanation that a lot of readers may get lost.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though this book is published with an 'academic' look by Cambridge, it would have better put out as a general book, available for the general market, because it's a thoroughly entertaining book on language which doesn't pretend to be trying to do anything very academic - even though the author plainly knows his stuff.
If you're looking for something academically-written, this isn't it, but it's a great read all the same, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Trask answers the question in his title in a variety of ways, and by the end of the book you'll certainly have a better understanding of why those people who continually write to the newspaper about 'language standards falling' and 'no one pays any attention to the rule about split infinitives' and such are wasting their time. Language is a hugely living thing, set in motion by human beings and changing as they change and as their circumstances change.
I learned a great deal from the book, and Trask (or Robert McColl Millar, who revised the book after Trask's early death) has a great sense of humour, and a huge delight in language.
The only quibble about this book is that Cambridge's printing of it as an academic-style book means that they've printed it in a font that's uncomfortably small (for older eyes).

[Indah Threez Lestari · Rating 4 out of 5]

453rd - 2011

[Wendelle]

amusing and lively