An introduction to the history of languages, from distant past to distant future, looking at how languages arise, change, and die, and showing how the histories of peoples and languages are closely connected. It mixes chapters on general processes with accounts of specific languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Greek, Latin, and English.

• List of Maps


• List of Figures


• List of Tables


• Preface


• Part I: Before History


• 1: Unwritten Languages


• 2: The Large Language Groups


• Part II: The Basis of History


• 3: History and Writing


• 4: Hieroglyphs and Egyptian


• 5: Chinese - The Oldest Survivor


• Part III: Language Expansions


• 6: Greek - Conquest and Culture


• 7: Latin - Conquest and Order


• 8: Arabic - Conquest and Religion


• Part IV: Languages and Nations


• 9: Did Dante Write in Italian?


• 10: From Germanic to Modern English


• 11: The Era of National Languages


• Part V: Europe and the World


• 12: Languages of Europe and of the World


• 13: How Languages are Born - or Made


• 14: How Languages Disappear


• Part VI: Recent Past, Present, Future


• 15: The Heyday of English


• 16: Chinese and English in China


• 17: And Then?


• Chronology


• References


• Guidelines for Answers to Questions


• Index

Tore Janson was Professor of Oriental and African Languages at the University of Göteborg until his retirement in 2000. He was previously Professor of Latin at the same university and is a world expert on its history. He is the author of the international bestsellers Speak: A Short History of Languages (OUP 2002; paperback 2003) and The Natural History of Latin (OUP 2004, paperback 2005).