HT reviewer Mihir Chitre picks his favourite read of 2023
"The Power of Babel" by John McWhorter explores the history and evolution of language, challenging the concept of dialects and discussing the relationship between language and power. It offers fascinating insights into various languages and their quirks.
For a few years now, I’ve been regularly reading articles by American linguist John McWhorter in The Atlantic and elsewhere. His The Power of Babel, whose title is, of course, a spin on the Biblical tower, is one of the more fascinating books on linguistics that I’ve read. Tracing the history and evolution of language in seven chapters, the book travels across different time zones, countries and continents to explain, with fascinating ease, the various aspects and quirks of language. An astute observer of society, the author talks about the relationship between language and political power and how, when an empire fades, so does the importance and use of its language.
Some of the book’s arguments changed my perspective. For instance, McWhorter argues that there is no such thing as a dialect. According to him, it’s a term used by speakers of a more powerful language to identify a similar and less powerful one. Apparently, linguistically speaking, it is impossible to determine where a dialect stops and where a language begins. This means we could either say that every language in the world is a dialect or that there is no such thing. So for example, all the Scandinavian languages except for Finnish are mutually understandable but Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are considered separate languages. On the other hand, there are several Chinese languages spoken in different regions of that country which are not mutually understandable. Indeed, if a person from Beijing travels to western China, they wouldn’t understand a word of what’s being spoken around them. Yet, all these languages are labelled Mandarin Chinese. The author presents several such examples. There’s also an interesting section on the evolution of Creoles that cites Afrikaans, which is a mixture of Dutch and local languages spoken in South Africa.
Unlike many books on linguistics, this one isn’t overly technical and takes care to place its subject within the relevant historical and socio-political contexts. A great read.
READ MORE: HT reviewers pick their best reads of 2023
Mihir Chitre is the author of two books of poetry, ‘School of Age’ and ‘Hyphenated’. He is the brain behind the advertising campaigns ‘#LaughAtDeath’ and ‘#HarBhashaEqual’ and has made the short film ‘Hello Brick Road’
