Николас Остлер - Empires of the Word - A language History of the World

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Николас Остлер - Empires of the Word - A language History of the World» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию без сокращений). В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Год выпуска: 2005, Жанр: Языкознание, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

Empires of the Word: A language History of the World: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «Empires of the Word: A language History of the World»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

Nicholas Ostler’s Empires of the Word is the first history of the world’s
great tongues, gloriously celebrating the wonder of words that binds
communities together and makes possible both the living of a common history
and the telling of it. From the uncanny resilience of Chinese through twenty
centuries of invasions to the engaging self-regard of Greek and to the
struggles that gave birth to the languages of modern Europe, these epic
achievements and more are brilliantly explored, as are the fascinating
failures of once "universal" languages. A splendid, authoritative, and
remarkable work, it demonstrates how the language history of the world
eloquently reveals the real character of our planet’s diverse peoples and
prepares us for a linguistic future full of surprises.

Empires of the Word: A language History of the World — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «Empires of the Word: A language History of the World», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

851

Just the latest example is the Manchu, who ruled China from 1644 to 1911, but were totally absorbed by their subject population. Their language is now on the edge of extinction. (See Chapter 4, ‘Language from Huang-he to Yangtze’, p. 143.)

852

The ‘Strasburg Oaths’, a treaty between Ludwig the German and Charles the Bald. Ironically, it comes only after the restoration of a single government across most of France, German and Italy. (See Chapter 8, p. 317.)

853

They made a late exception to admit the Magyars in the tenth century, creating the Hungarian pocket in the midst of Slavic central Europe.

854

There is actually an implicit dispute in the sources on who these invaders were. Evidently they were speakers of a Low German dialect, but Gildas ( a Celt, writing before 550) calls them Saxons ( or more exactly Saxones ferocissimi illi nefandi nominis Saxones deo hominibusque invisi , ‘those ferocious Saxons of unspeakable name hateful to God and men’, xxiii.l), while Procopius (a Greek—less personally involved—writing also before 550, and probably using information from Angles on a Frankish mission to Byzantium) says they were Angles and Frisians ( Gothic War , iv.20). It is the Venerable Bede, in his history published in 731, who calls them Angles, Saxons and Jutes ( i. 15 ). The Saxons and Franks (named for their favourite weapons, the seax or knife and the franca or javelin) were not among the tribes known to Tacitus, but would have lived where he places the Chauci and the Tungri, at the mouths of the Weser and Rhine respectively.

855

Recorded in the Gaulish name of an old village in the French Jura, Isarnodori, ferrei ostii , ‘iron door’. Grimm (1876, vol. I, ch. 4: 5).

856

The fact that Greek speech was so dialectally riven at the time had an interesting impact on these styles and genres: for the first few centuries after written literature began, each became associated with a particular dialect, typically that of its first practitioners, even though the literature was largely shared. So epic poetry had to be written in Homer’s mixture of Ionic and Aeolic, lyric poetry in Doric, history at first in Ionic, tragedy in Attic. This played some role in perpetuating knowledge of the dialects, even after the increasing unity of the Greek world was pushing them out of actual use in conversation. It is a particularly good example of how so much of a language’s flavour comes purely by association.

857

Old English ‘Be happy’; ‘stay healthy’; ‘let it come’ (i.e. the loving-cup passed around); ‘drink lustily’ ‘drink backwards’; ‘drink to me’ ‘drink half; ‘drink to the dregs’. These are all English toasts and drinking boasts to be heard as the English caroused the night away before the crucial battle of Hastings. Geoffrey of Monmouth, writing c .1140, says “… to this day the tradition has endured in Britain that at a banquet the one who drinks to another says “waesseil” , and he who receives the cup after him replies “drincheil’” (Historia Regum Britannie § 100, ms 568, f. 46v.).

858

Latin titles of prayers, ‘Spirit of the Lord’, ‘Salvation of the people’, ‘Hail Holy Mother’, following naturalised French forms of ‘Take pity’, (Greek) ‘Lord, have mercy’, ‘Our Father’.

859

Robert Wace, a Norman from Jersey, was commissioned in the 1160s by King Henry II to write a celebration of Norman history, named for its patriarch Rollo (i.e. Rou ). This was to parallel his earlier Roman de Brut , on Britain before the Normans (likewise supposedly founded by Brutus). This section tells of the different demeanours of the English and Normans on the night before Hastings, 1066; but it also neatly illustrates the different roles of English, Norman French and Latin in Norman England.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «Empires of the Word: A language History of the World»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «Empires of the Word: A language History of the World» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Отзывы о книге «Empires of the Word: A language History of the World»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «Empires of the Word: A language History of the World» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x