Explore 21 of the most commonly spoken languages in the world, their origins and where they are spoken today.

The search for the origin of human language has finally come of age. For centuries, progress in Ur-language research was slow and spasmodic; many scientists came to believe that there was no definitive way to answer its central questions. Then, in the past 20 years, everything changed. Linguist Kenneally shows how linguists, cognitive scientists, animal researchers, biologists, and geneticists have all contributed valuable new insights into language...

"More than 400 living and extinct languages are detailed in this information-packed reference. Each article covers the political, social, and historical background of the language by stating the number of speakers; the countries where it is spoken; how many dialects it spawned; its origins, characteristics, and examples of both words and the alphabet; and pronunciations. Anecdotes, literary quotations, and charts of script and numerals appear in sidebars...

"Trade book on the history of imaginary languages by a French linguist who was one of the first to write on the topic and to popularize linguistics for a general and literary audience"--

How did language come to be? Why can we speak, while cats and dogs can't? When, how, and where did our 7,000 world languages come from? Isabella looks at languages-- spoken, written and signed-- to find out where they came from and how they're changing.