400's Language

To clarify: this is a list of books put together by us, the Dewey Group. The only criteria for a book to be added is that it's a 400 that one of us has read and found worth recommending. If you've got something that meets that criteria please post your recommendation. I'll try and keep an updated list at the top with who recommended what for convenience (and culpability).

The Dewey Challenge Crew Approves

400 Language
400 Language The Way We Talk Now - fundevogel
400 Language The Language Instinct - lorax
400 Language The First Word - lorax
401 Philosophy & theory The Unfolding of Language - hailelib
401 Philosophy & theory The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue - fleela
409 Geographical & persons treatment Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World - hailelib & fleela (a hardy thumbs up from fleela)

410 Linguistics
410 Linguistics The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax - E59F
411 Writing systems Alpha Beta: How 26 Letters Shaped the Western World - fleela
413 Dictionaries They Have a Word For It - lorax
415 Structural systems Words and Rules - lorax
417 Dialectology & historical linguistics The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language - fleela
417 Dialectology & historical linguistics Story of Human Language - fleela
417 Dialectology & historical linguistics Bastard Tongues - lorax
417 Dialectology & historical linguistics Spoken Here - lorax
418 Standard usage; Applied linguistics Le Ton Beau De Marot - lorax

420 English & Old English
420 English & Old English Made in America - lorax (reservations; Bryson's research is sometimes sloppy, but it's enjoyable)
420 English & Old English Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English - fleela
420 English & Old English The Mother Tongue - Nickelini
420 English & Old English The Story of English - Nickelini
422 English etymology What's in a Word - Nickelini
422 English etymology Anonyponymous - carlym
423 English dictionaries Disheveled Dictionary - Nickelini
423 English dictionaries Reading the OED - lorax
423 English dictionaries The Professor and the Madman - carlym
423 English dictionaries The Devil's Dictionary - lucien (formatted like a dictionary, available for free here)
425 English grammar Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog - fundevogel
427 English language variations Do You Speak American? - fleela
428 Standard English usage Deluxe Transitive Vampire - Nickelini
428 Standard English usage Eats, Shoots and Leaves - carlym

450 Italian, Romanian, Rhaeto-Romanic
458 Standard Italian usage Italian Phrase Book TM 30-603 (Restricted) - carlym

480 Hellenic languages; Classical Greek
480 Hellenic Languages; Classical Greek Who Killed Homer? - Zoe
487 Preclassical & Postclassical Greek The Decipherment of Linear B - Zoe (might be technical)

490 Other languages
492 Afro-Asiatic languages; Semitic: Empires of the Plain: Henry Rawlinson and the Lost Languages of Babylon - Zoe (might be dry for those not interested in the history of scholarship)

General recommendations:

Fleela finds books by John McWhorter enjoyable.

Carlym recommends military phrasebooks for standard usage sections in foreign languages. These can be found on ebay and other places used books are sold.

You can see my 400 books in my catalog by looking at my DDxxx tags. Here's my tag list http://www.librarything.com/tags/fleela

Recommendations are below in message #8.

Hmmm, a little interested in linguistics, are you Fleela? There are some really interesting titles there. I second The Story of English and Mother Tongue, and add:

422: What's in a Word: Etymological Gossip About Some Interesting English Words, Robert Gorrell

423.21: Disheveled Dictionary: A Curious Caper Through Our Sumptuous Lexicon, Karen Elizabeth Gordon (loved this one!)

428.2: Deluxe Transitive Vampire, Karen Elizabeth Gordon

Good luck with your search.

I found one more in my library: If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents, a Memoir, by Gregory Rabassa. I haven't read it yet, but it was a gift from someone who highly recommends it.

oops: edited to say that this one is 418.

I would second The Unfolding of Language and Empires of the Word.

This is not an exhaustive list of my 400s (which are easily seen by looking at my catalog), just those I'd recommend.

400:
The Language Instinct
The First Word

413:
They Have a Word For It

415:
Words and Rules

417:
Bastard Tongues
Spoken Here

418:
Le Ton Beau de Marot

420:
Made in America (this one with reservations; Bryson's research is sometimes sloppy, but it's enjoyable)

423:
Reading the OED

It looks like there are some good suggestions from others I'll have to check out!

Thanks for all the recommendation everyone! Please come back if you find something else worth recommending.

@fleela I haven't added your recommendations to the list yet since you didn't say which of those books you had already read. It's a good list you've put together, but can you identify which books you would recommend that you've already read? I know sometimes I've thought a book would be cool going in and found it to be a dog or just barely readable when I actually read it. I'm hoping good informed recommendations will prevent more of that for me in 400s.

401- The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue

409- Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World This book kept me up at night. The author uses language to trace the history of early civilizations, combining two of my obsessions.

411- Alpha Beta: How 26 Letters Shaped the Western World

417- The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language and Story of Human Language I'll read/listen to anything by John McWhorter.

420- Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English Hey look, more John McWhorter.
The Mother Tongue and Made in America Totally agree with lorax's assessment of Bryson's scholarship, but these two are immensely readable.

427- Do You Speak American? This was originally a documentary made for PBS.

422--Anonyponymous. This is short and fairly entertaining, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are better books in this category.

423--The Professor and the Madman

428--Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Entertaining whether you agree with Truss's approach or not.

For "standard usage" in other languages, I have read a couple of World War II military phrasebooks, such as this one: Italian Phrase Book TM 30-603 (Restricted). I have found them at book sales and on Ebay, and I find them interesting and entertaining. I think it's highly unlikely that I'm going to find any books in English about standard usage in other languages, and these are short enough that I can read the whole book (as opposed to a textbook or regular dictionary).

I think I'm probably going to read Anonyponymous. It sounds interesting to me.

@fleela - I only just noticed you updated your post. Thanks for your recommendations, I've updated the main list with them now. I read a couple pages of The Power of Babel online and I really liked it.

wait - aren't there multiple threads on the 400s? have they all been cross-posted for recommendations? is this the most up to date thread? thanks! im trying to go back and make sure I havent missed much.

There may be other threads, but this is the most recent and--I think--the only one where the recommendations are being compiled in a list at the top (which is a great idea--thanks, fundevogel!)

I have a question: what sort of recommendations are we looking for here?

I've enjoyed:
487 Preclassical & Postclassical Greek: The Decipherment of Linear B
492 Afro-Asiatic languages; Semitic: Empires of the Plain: Henry Rawlinson and the Lost Languages of Babylon

But I can't remember whether The Decipherment of Linear B was technical or not, and I think parts of Empires of the Plain could get dry for people who aren't really interested in the history of scholarship. I stand by my recommendations, though, since I liked them both!

On the other hand, I wasn't impressed with
493 Non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic Languages: The Linguist and the Emperor

It wasn't very deep or even particularly entertaining, but it was certainly an easy read, short and accessible. And the topic itself has intrinsic interest, at least for me, so it wasn't a painful read. There are probably better books about the subject out there, but this is the one I happened to read.... So anyone else looking to fill a category could read it too. I'm not sure whether this counts as a recommendation.

And then there's 480 Hellenic Languages; Classical Greek: Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom. I read this book years ago and can't honestly remember it very well. This probably means it's okay but not outstanding, though I might appreciate it more now after many years of my own classical education.

My only criteria is the you've read it, you think it is worth recommending and it's a 400. I think this keeps the thread from getting confusing. I kinda gave up consulting the thread on 200's because people were listing books on their TBR lists, which is great, but I wanted to highlight books that already have the Dewey Challenge stamp of approval.

If you guys like I could add a second list up top for books no one has gotten to yet but might be worth reading. Heck, we could even list the dogs so people knew which ones to avoid. Let me know what you think.

fundevogel, those are good ideas - I find neutral and negative reviews to be as helpful as positive ones; perhaps even more so. After all, if someone else didn't like it, I can leave it alone and pursue others that are more worthwhile, whereas even if a book has a positive review, my tastes may not match someone else's so I still have to gauge that.

The TBR list may be helpful as well, just to help make folks aware of what is out there.

Yup, the more lists the merrier, as far as I'm concerned!

Thanks for clarifying the requirements too. I think I will add Who Killed Homer? to my list of recommendations It's in 480 Hellenic Languages; Classical Greek.

Ok. I'll set that up in a new thread so we can keep the lists up top without killing librarything with touchstones.

I'd also recommend Jewish as a second language, and Yiddish with George and Laura, but LT doesn't calculate DDN for either.

Maybe 408 - 'With respect to kinds of persons' for the first one, and either '409 Geographical & persons treatment' or '439 Other Germanic languages' for the George and Laura one? Do those sound reasonable?

NB - there is a target audience for the humor in these books. George and Laura is probably more for those who enjoy political humor and/or lean leftish while the 2nd language one is good for those who have some experience with Jewish family life and/or are new to Jewish family life.

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Neither of those get classified as linguistics at all where I look; the New York Public Library puts Jewish as a second language in 817 (humor) and the Los Angeles Public Library puts it in 808, collections of literature; the LA library can be wonky, though, so I'd trust NY here. (Ordinarily I go with the LC's Dewey classification, but they don't have one in this case.) Yiddish with George and Laura is either in 973 (US history, where any other books about George Bush would go) or 817 (humor again). If you need to shoehorn them into the 400s, 439 -- which is where Born to Kvetch goes -- would be the most sensible place.

Although 423 is one of the 'easier' 400s to find books for, I'll add a recommendation for Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary. It's formatted as a dictionary where Bierce supplies humorous or satirical definitions for the various words.

Since it's formatted as a dictionary, it might not be the best cover to cover read - but if you read a few entries a day you can breeze through it. It's also available on DailyLit.com which might be a good way to read it.