🧲 Books like this
Babel No More: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners
Michael Erard · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Unfolding Of Language
Guy Deutscher · 360 pages
The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language
John McWhorter · 336 pages
How Language Works: How Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning, and Languages Live or Die
David Crystal · 506 pages
In the author's own words, "How Language Works is not about music, cookery, or sex. But it is about how we talk about music, cookery, and sex—or, indeed, anything at all." Language is so fundamental to everyday life that we take it for granted. But as David Crystal makes clear in this work of unprecedented scope, language is an extremely powerful tool that defines the human species. Crystal offers
Metaphors We Live By
George Lakoff, Mark Johnson · 259 pages
Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"--Metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them.
Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything
David Bellos · 304 pages
The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us
James W. Pennebaker · 360 pages
The Secret Life of Pronouns is based on a large-scale research project that links natural language use to real world social and psychological processes. Using computerized text analyses on hundreds of thousands of letters, poems, books, blogs, Tweets, conversations, and other texts, it is possible to begin to read people’s hearts and minds in ways they can’t do themselves.
What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves
Benjamin K. Bergen · 287 pages
"Smart as hell and funny as fuck, this book explains why we can't stop swearing and what it tells us about our language and brains. Everyone swears. Only the rare individual can avoid ever letting slip an expletive. And yet, we ban the words from television and insist that polite people excise them from their vocabularies. That's a fucking shame. Not only is swearing colorful, fun, and often power
The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language
Mark Forsyth · 373 pages
The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
Steven Pinker · 499 pages
New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker possesses that rare combination of scientific aptitude and verbal eloquence that enables him to provide lucid explanations of deep and powerful ideas. His previous books—including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Blank Slate—have catapulted him into the limelight as one of today's most important and popular science writers.Now, in The Stuff of Thought
Seeing Voices
Oliver Sacks · 186 pages
A neurologist investigates the world of the deaf, examining their past and present treatment at the hands of society, and assesses the value and significance of sign language.
Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
Maryanne Wolf · 320 pages
In the Book. Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Harper Perennial, 2008. This is an account of how our brains change as we learn to read.
La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language
Dianne Hales · 336 pages
"Italians say that someone who acquires a new language 'possesses' it. In my case, Italian possesses me. With Italian racing like blood through my veins, I do indeed see with different eyes, hear with different ears, and drink in the world with all my senses..."A celebration of the language and culture of Italy, La Bella Lingua is the story of how a language shaped a nation, told against the backd
Practical English Usage
Michael Swan · 654 pages
A topic-by-topic guide for teachers and learners of English grammar and vocabulary.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
American Heritage Dictionary · 2,140 pages
The Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed
Karen Elizabeth Gordon · 98 pages
My Grammar and I... Or Should That Be Me?: How to Speak and Write It Right
Caroline Taggart, J.A. Wines
Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages
Mark Abley · 321 pages
The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of "Proper" English, from Shakespeare to South Park
Jack Lynch · 326 pages
Lapsing Into a Comma: A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print--And How to Avoid Them
Bill Walsh · 256 pages
No writer's or editor's desk is complete without a battered, page-bent copy of the AP Stylebook. However, this not-so-easy-to-use reference of journalistic style is often not up-to-date and leaves reporters and copyeditors unsatisfied. Bill Walsh, copy chief for the Washington Post's business desk, addresses these shortcomings in Lapsing into a Comma. In an opinionated, humorous, and yes, curmudge
Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet From A to Z
David Sacks · 405 pages
Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States
Bill Bryson · 417 pages
Bill Bryson turns away from the highways and byways of middle America, so hilariously depicted in his bestselling The Lost Continent, for a fast, exhilarating ride along the Route 66 of American language and popular culture. In Made in America, Bryson de-mythologizes his native land - explaining how a dusty desert hamlet with neither woods nor holly became Hollywood, how the Wild West wasn't wo