More gruel from our corporate masters

More shiny things to distract me from the real questions.  In this case it is Empires of the Word, Nicholas Ostler's 2004 "Language History of the World"...two bucks, here (reviewed here in The Guardian).

From the Preface:

Far more than princes, states or economies, it is language-communities who are the real players in world history, persisting through the ages, clearly and consciously perceived by their speakers as symbols of identity, but nonetheless gradually changing, and perhaps splitting or even merging as the communities react to new realities. This interplay of languages is an aspect of history that has too long been neglected.

Here is the freaking Table of Contents -

PREFACE

PROLOGUE: A CLASH OF LANGUAGES PART I: THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE HISTORY
1 Themistocles’ Carpet
- The language view of human history
- The state of nature
- Literacy and the beginning of language history

2 What It Takes to Be a World Language; or, You Never Can Tell

PART II: LANGUAGES BY LAND

3 The Desert Blooms: Language Innovation in the Middle East
- Three sisters who span the history of 4500 years
- The story in brief: Language leapfrog
- Sumerian—the first classical language: Life after death

FIRST INTERLUDE: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ELAMITE?
- Akkadian—world-beating technology: A model of literacy
- Phoenician—commerce without culture: Canaan, and points west
- Aramaic—the desert song: Interlingua of western Asia

SECOND INTERLUDE: THE SHIELD OF FAITH
- Arabic—eloquence and equality: The triumph of ‘submission’

THIRD INTERLUDE: TURKIC AND PERSIAN, OUTRIDERS OF ISLAM
- A Middle Eastern inheritance: The glamour of the desert nomad

4 Triumphs of Fertility: Egyptian and Chinese
- Careers in parallel
- Language along the Nile
- A stately progress
- Immigrants from Libya and Kush
- Competition from Aramaic and Greek
- Changes in writing
- Final paradoxes
- Language from Huang-he to Yangtze
- Origins
- First Unity
- Retreat to the south
- Northern influences
- Beyond the southern sea
- Dealing with foreign devils
- Whys and wherefores
- Holding fast to a system of writing
- Foreign relations
- China’s disciples
- Coping with invasions: Egyptian undercut
- Coping with invasions: Chinese unsettled

5 Charming Like a Creeper: The Cultured Career of Sanskrit
- The story in brief
- The character of Sanskrit
- Intrinsic qualities
- Sanskrit in Indian life
- Outsiders’ views
- The spread of Sanskrit Sanskrit in India
- Sanskrit in South-East Asia
- Sanskrit carried by Buddhism: Central and eastern Asia
- Sanskrit supplanted
- The charm of Sanskrit
- The roots of Sanskrit’s charm
- Limiting weaknesses
- Sanskrit no longer alone

6 Three Thousand Years of Solipsism: The Adventures of Greek
- Greek at its acme
- Who is a Greek?
- What kind of a language?
- Homes from home: Greek spread through settlement
- Kings of Asia: Greek spread through war
- A Roman welcome: Greek spread through culture
- Mid-life crisis: Attempt at a new beginning
- Intimations of decline
- Bactria, Persia, Mesopotamia
- Syria, Palestine, Egypt
- Greece
- Anatolia
- Consolations in age
- Retrospect: The life cycle of a classic

7 Contesting Europe: Celt, Roman, German and Slav
- Reversals of fortune
- The contenders: Greek and Roman views
- The Celts
- The Germans
- The Romans
- The Slavs
- Rún: The impulsive pre-eminence of the Celts
- Traces of Celtic languages
- How to recognise Celtic
- Celtic literacy
- How Gaulish spread
- The Gauls’ advances in the historic record
- Consilium: The rationale of Roman Imperium
- Mōs Māiōrum—the Roman way
- The desertion of Gaulish
- Latin among the Basques and the Britons
- Einfall: Germanic and Slavic advances
- The Germanic invasions—irresistible and ineffectual
- Slavonic dawn in the Balkans
- Against the odds: The advent of English

8 The First Death of Latin

PART III: LANGUAGES BY SEA

9 The Second Death of Latin

10 Usurpers of Greatness: Spanish in the New World
- Portrait of a conquistador
- An unprecedented empire
- First chinks in the language barrier: Interpreters, bilinguals, grammarians
- Past struggles: How American languages had spread
- The spread of Nahuatl
- The spread of Quechua
- The spreads of Chibcha, Guaraní, Mapudungun
- The Church’s solution: The lenguas generales
- The state’s solution: Hispanización
- Coda: Across the Pacific

11 In the Train of Empire: Europe’s Languages Abroad
- Portuguese pioneers
- An Asian empire
- Portuguese in America
- Dutch interlopers
- La francophonie
- French in Europe
- The first empire
- The second empire
- The Third Rome, and all the Russias
- The origins of Russian
- Russian east then west
- Russian north then south
- The status of Russian
- The Soviet experiment
- Conclusions
- Curiously ineffective—German ambitions
- Imperial epilogue: Kōminka

12 Microcosm or Distorting Mirror? The Career of English
- Endurance test: Seeing off Norman French
- English overlaid
- Spreading the Anglo-Norman package
- The waning of Norman French
- Stabilising the language
- What sort of a language?
- Westward Ho! Pirates and planters
- Someone else’s land
- Manifest destiny
- Winning ways
- Changing perspective—English in India
- A merchant venture
- Protestantism, profit and progress
- Success, despite the best intentions
- The world taken by storm
- An empire completed
- Wonder upon wonder
- English among its peers

PART IV: LANGUAGES TODAY AND TOMORROW

13 The Current Top Twenty

14 Looking Ahead What is old
- What is new
- Way to go
- Three threads: Freedom, prestige and learnability
- Freedom
- Prestige
- What makes a language learnable
- Vaster than empires

I wish I'd found this Thursday night, would have put the long weekend to better use....!