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How Language Works: How Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning, and Languages Live or Die
David Crystal · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThrough the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages
Guy Deutscher · 304 pages
This book confronts the thorny question of how and whether culture shapes language and language, culture. Linguistics has long shied away from claiming any link between a language and the culture of its speakers: too much simplistic (even bigoted) chatter about the romance of Italian and the goose-stepping orderliness of German has made serious thinkers wary of the entire subject. But now, acclaim
The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language
John McWhorter · 336 pages
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.
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
Between You Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen
Mary Norris · 228 pages
A New Yorker copy veteran presents laugh-out-loud descriptions of some of the most common and vexing errors in language and usage, drawing on examples from classic literature and pop culture while sharing anecdotes from her work with celebrated writers.
Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English
Patricia T. O'Conner · 256 pages
A guide to English grammar and style reveals the underlying logic of the language with the help of examples organized according to specific problems.
The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language
Melvyn Bragg · 322 pages
"In this book Melvyn Bragg shows us the remarkable story of the English Language; from its beginnings as a minor guttural Germanic dialect to its position today as a truly established global language. Along the way its colorful story takes in a host of characters and locations, from the early tribes, Alfred the Great's stubborn resistance to the Danes, and through its early literary masterpieces s
A Gateway to Sindarin: A Grammar of an Elvish Language from JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings
David Salo · 440 pages
"From the 1910s to the 1970s, author and linguist J.R.R. Tolkien worked at creating plausibly realistic languages to be used by the creatures and characters in his novels. Like his other languages, Sindarin was a new invention, not based on any existing or artificial language. By the time of his death, he had established fairly complete descriptions of two languages, the "elvish" tongues Quenya an
Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World
Nicholas Ostler · 624 pages
In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language
Arika Okrent · 342 pages
Just about everyone has heard of Esperanto, which was nothing less than one man's attempt to bring about world peace by means of linguistic solidarity. And every Star Trek fan knows about Klingon, which was nothing more than a television show's attempt to create a tough-sounding language befitting a warrior race with ridged foreheads. But few people have heard of Babm, Blissymbolics, and the nearl
The Story of English
Robert McCrum, Robert MacNeil · 496 pages
Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries
Kory Stamper · 296 pages
"Brimming with intelligence and personality, a vastly entertaining account of how dictionaries are made - a must read for word mavens. Have you ever tried to define the word "is?" Do you have strong feelings about the word (and, yes, it is a word) "irregardless?" Did you know that OMG was first used in 1917, in a letter to Winston Churchill? These are the questions that keep lexicographers up at n
Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World
Ella Frances Sanders · 112 pages
"An artistic collection of 50 drawings featuring unique, funny, and poignant foreign words that have no direct translation into English. Did you know that the Japanese have a word to express the way sunlight filters through the leaves of trees? Or that there's a Swedish word to describe the reflection of the moon across the water? The nuanced beauty of language is even more interesting and relevan
When in French: Love in a Second Language
Lauren Collins · 243 pages
"A language barrier is no match for love. Lauren Collins discovered this firsthand when, in her early thirties, she moved to London and fell for a Frenchman named Olivier--a surprising turn of events for someone who didn't have a passport until she was in college. But what does it mean to love someone in a second language? Collins wonders, as her relationship with Olivier continues to grow entirel