What Language Is

John McWhorter writes this book against the popular sense of what language is, a view that drives linguists crazy. If you have studied even a little linguistics, you know the drill — people think that “language” is written, with grammatical paradigms to memorize, a “pure” vocabulary, with low-status versions somehow “not real,” and thus a real language should ideally be defended with the ferocity of the Académie Française. People “make mistakes” when speaking a “real” language.Actually, uh, those “mistakes” are, you know, part of how real languages really work. McWhorter makes that case in an engaging way, using examples from all the continents of the world. If you think about language like a Victorian grammarian or a member of the Académie Française, you’ll learn how languages really work. Because McWhorter writes very well, you’ll also enjoy the journey, though you might not share his enthusiasm for various categories of cultural references.Inside that velvet glove, however, he has hidden some actual scholarship. He argues that “typical” languages are crazy complex in specific ways — like Navajo, which apparently does not have regular verbs. Most of the languages you’ve heard of have been simplified over the years because they are imperial languages that people have learned as adults, or the languages that conquerors have had to learn to rule a conquered people.English provides a great example, with almost no conjugations to learn, learned first by Vikings and then by the Norman French. Now as an imperial language, English has since spawned mixed languages like Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea) or Jamaican patois. These creole languages are not “bad,” just different. They resemble English, Persian, Swahili, or Chinese, and differ from Navajo or Pashto in patterned ways.When I studied linguistics long ago and far away, some scholars spoke of English as a creole. That hypothesis did not pan out, but the view that McWhorter and his scholarly colleagues offer is much more persuasive. In this way, “language enthusiasts” will also learn much here.

There needs to be a caveat for anyone reading John McWhorter's latest book. This is not the only book you should ever read on language (and McWhorter would agree), but for people who love language per se, the book is really a treat.The book is, quite accurately described as a romp through dozens of languages to prove a few well chosen points about language in general. Dr. McWhorter is a creolist by training, and so the focus of his interest is most often on the processes of language change, answering questions like: How did that language develop in that odd way, whereas the language over the hill developed in a different odd way. And odd, serendipitous development is the rule rather than the exception in almost every case--the highly regular, controlled languages being the exception. William Safire and other prescriptivist Miss Grundys of the world would roll over in their graves at much of what he says, but he is right: language will do what it will do, and there is no force on earth that can stop it from changing and evolving.There is one big, big insight in the book that no one should miss, and that is that languages that are largely learned in isolation as first speech varieties by children will preserve more irregularity than languages that are learned in contact situations by adults, who just don't have the fantastic skills of autonomic acquisition. These "adult learned" languages sluff off irregularities, eliminate messy stuff, reduce complex sound systems and generally simplify, simplify, simplify. But once the new language gets established and babies start to learn it, it is off and running again, developing more complexity.All that said, there is a wonkish caveat: Dr. McWhorter writes very fast, and very fluidly. His prose sounds just like him talking, making it seem almost as if he were dictating the book. This is unlikely given the excruciatingly produced examples in multiple phonetic fonts. However, nit-pickers will definitely find errors in the examples, and some things to carp about in his broad sweep of language functions.That said, no one should deprive themselves of the fun of reading this book. It is a hoot and a half, and if one is a linguist or knows many of the languages in question, it will be a guilty pleasure to read it and laugh. I'm giving it to my freshmen. Maybe it will inspire them to stop thinking of linguistics as some kind of dry-as-dust formalist exercise.A tip: The passages on the use of "ass" as a pseudo-pronoun in Black English Vernacular (Ebonics) is worth the price of the book.

A fun, engaging tour of the world's languages, the book manages to make serious arguments about language whilst remaining a quick and entertaining read. The text is full of interesting examples from both well known and much more obscure languages, but this adds up to a lot more than just a cabinet of linguistic curiosities; the author uses the examples to argue that many of the claims made about the relative 'worth' of languages ('written languages are more sophisticated than oral ones', '"big" languages like English are richer than "small" languages spoken by isolated groups') simply aren't supported by the evidence.

I've read many books on language, so reading "What Language Is" is not my first foray into the subject. I found this book difficult to follow and difficult to become absorbed in. It seems as if the author wandered about in his thoughts. I never felt that one topic or one chapter led logically to the next. That said, I did appreciate McWhorter's defense of Black English. I've always found Black English perfectly understandable and have even thought that, in dropping unnecessary verb forms, it's a language of the future. That is, as the English language evolves, it may evolve in this direction.When it comes to the difference between oral language (possibly 150,000 years old according to the author) and written language (probably 5,500 years old), I don't really grasp what McWhorter is saying. I especially don't grasp it because I have never pronounced the word "them" as "thum," which McWhorter claims is the way almost everybody pronounces it. The American Heritage Dictionary gives "them" (e as in pet) as the first pronunciation, "thum" as the second -- not as the exclusive. I could not follow this argument about oral vs. written language.One argument that I could and did follow was McWhorter's explanation of how, when adults who are not native speakers of a language must learn that language, they inevitably simplify it. Language is always evolving: the most fun parts of this book are the parts that give a picture of this evolution.

There are quite a few insights and new things about languages in general - which is interesting to a language junkie like myself, even after I've read many books on the topic.The language of the book itself is very rich and sophisticated, sprinkled with nice humor. But it is a tough read at times; in some places too technical and detailed, in some maybe too repetitive. Well, this is what you have to put up with, being a language junkie. :-)