31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ego amo latinam!, January 16, 2008
This review is from: Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin (Hardcover)
Nicholas Ostler's Ad Infinitum is a thorough, illuminating history of the Latin language, following it from its birth among the other pre-Christian languages of the Mediterranean; to its adolescent contention with Etruscan and Greek on the Italian peninsula; to its maturity with Cicero, Horace, Ovid, and others; to its middle age as the progenitor of the Romance languages of continental Europe; and finally to its respected senescence as the language (now largely abandoned) of the Catholic church. Along the way, Latin became the backbone, some would say, of modern English (along with powerful Germanic and Greek influences, of course). This very paragraph is full of words drawn directly from Latin, in fact: can you find some of them? :)
The book is well written and full of fascinating tidbits I haven't encountered elsewhere. Practically every page offers some interesting insight or connection to the present day. Just a few examples: Ostler explains the origins of such taken-for-granted words as "classic", "quality", "romance", "volume", "sacrament", "bishop", and many others. Even "Latin" istelf (why isn't it Roman?). Ostler also explains how the complex grammar of Latin emerged, as well as how isolation following the collapse of the Roman Empire led to the disippation of much of that grammar, helping to give birth to modern Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and other Romance languages -- all comparatively simpler in structure.
Ad Infinitum is buttressed by useful appendices on all the known Etruscan borrowings in Latin and on sound changes apparent in Latin nouns and verbs. There's also a Latin tag for each chapter, and Ostler takes an appendix to comment on them in detail. Finally, he provides very detailed footnotes (always citing the original Latin -- or other languages) and an exhaustive bibliography for further research.
Recommended highly for anyone interested in Latin, Romance linguistics, linguistics in general, and European history. Perhaps the book will spark renewed interest in the language, now that it is finally beginning a decline into obscurity. Time was when Latin was compulsory in any respectable education, but no more. Today, though Latin still available in most universities, students are opting for more "useful" languages, like Japanese, Arabic, or German. And you're hard-pressed to find it in high school curricula any longer (as it was when I went to school). If Ostler's book can stem the decline, even a little, his meticulous work will have been more than justified.
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39 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Portrait of a Language as a World Power, January 9, 2008
This review is from: Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin (Hardcover)
For those who like to embellish their sentences with Latin words or phrases this book will definitely help you improve your game. For years I've used Eugene Ehrlich's
AMO AMAS AMAT & MORE (Hudson Group Books), but it is only a quick reference book. Now, however, with Nicholas Ostler's book I have a better understanding of the development of Latin. Ostler has already written possibly one of the best books on the history of language:
Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World. In that book he wrote a history of the world with languages as the actors. In Ad Infinitum he has written a biography of one of those key players: namely, Latin.
Prior to the 3rd century BC, Latin co-existed with many other languages on the Italian peninsula: Ligurian, Umbrian, Etruscan, Oscan, to name a few. From Ostler's examples it looks as if those languages were very similar to Latin. So what happened in the life of Latin that caused it to emerge as the preeminent language, first on the peninsula, then ultimately throughout the known world?
Ostler offers three explanations as to why Latin prevailed. The first, of course, is that Rome was an imperial power. As the Roman army conquered new lands and peoples is left local cultures and languages undisturbed as long as they paid tribute to Rome. This is the modus operandi of successful empires. The administrators of the newly conquered regions spoke Latin, making it the language of power and prestige. This was a great incentive for locals to learn the language over time.
Secondly, the Roman army was always in need of new soldiers. All the young men conscripted from foreign lands were forced to learn Latin. Latin become a source of social mobility. And after a lifetime of service, soldiers were given land at the location of their last conquest, thus creating more Latin-speaking communities on the ever-expanding frontiers of the empire.
The third reason was that Romans were great engineers. They built roads, waterways, aquaducts and other types of infrastructure that greatly enhanced transportation and communication. All this building out of the empire solidified Latin's position as the universal language. Everyone from farmer, to soldier, to engineer, to administrator needed to learn Latin. The language itself became an empire.
Latin quickly became the language of Europe from England in the north to Romania in the east. It did not do so well in the Middle East and North Africa because Greek was still the language of culture in those areas. In fact early Latin writers still looked up to and borrowed from Greek literature. Ostler speaks of Latin's inferiority complex in relation to Greek in the early years. However, after the annexation of the Greek peninsula and the influx of Greek refugees, many Greek words started appearing in Latin. The Roman government even required that children's schooling begin with Greek. After several centuries of indoctrination and experimentation, Latin finally surpassed Greek as the language of culture and learning.
After the fall of Rome, Latin did not die. It remains to this day the language of the Catholic Church. It is the official language of Vatican City. After the dissolution of the empire, however, Latin devolved into a number of vernaculars such as French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. The development of the vernaculars depended very much on the language of the conquering Germanic tribe. The language of the Franks, for example, was very influential in the development of French.
Not only is Latin not dead today, it is enjoying somewhat of a renaissance. Ostler tells us that there are now many websites in Latin and that there is a Latin version of Wikipedia. Latin lives on in other ways. One need only look at the etymologies English words to discover the Latin origins of a large percentage or to study the structure of great works of English literature to see the continuing influence of Latin. For those who are interested in learning Latin, this book is a good place to start.
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82 of 102 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Caveat emptor!, April 3, 2008
This review is from: Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin (Hardcover)
A quirky, idiosyncratic introduction to the history of the Latin language. What purports to be a history of the language begins with the author's assumption that the Romans were from the first political, military, cultural and linguistic imperialists (perhaps not all that surprising in a student of Chomsky?). That in turn requires him to rewrite the history of Rome in and outside of Italy in ways which can only provoke raised eyebrows, and snickers, among Roman historians. The result of that first misstep is a prolonged exercise in history rewritten to substantiate theory: badly rewritten, too, with bloopers which run the gamut from from ancient (that Gaius Marius created a standing army for Rome) to the modern (that the Catholic Church no longer uses Latin in its liturgy). The unfortunate result is that there really is little room for the history of the Latin language. There are, amidst the historical theorizing, some interesting nuggets of information about Latin, but they are buried in far too much sand and detritus to make the effort of digging them out worthwhile.
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