Don't Believe a Word: The Surprising Truth About Language

Don't Believe a Word: The Surprising Truth About Language
Author :
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages : 323
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781324004264
ISBN-13 : 1324004266
Rating : 4/5 (64 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Don't Believe a Word: The Surprising Truth About Language by : David Shariatmadari

Download or read book Don't Believe a Word: The Surprising Truth About Language written by David Shariatmadari and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A linguist’s entertaining and highly informed guide to what languages are and how they function. Think you know language? Think again. There are languages that change when your mother-in-law is present. The language you speak could make you more prone to accidents. Swear words are produced in a special part of your brain. Over the past few decades, we have reached new frontiers of linguistic knowledge. Linguists can now explain how and why language changes, describe its structures, and map its activity in the brain. But despite these advances, much of what people believe about language is based on folklore, instinct, or hearsay. We imagine a word’s origin is it’s “true” meaning, that foreign languages are full of “untranslatable” words, or that grammatical mistakes undermine English. In Don’t Believe A Word, linguist David Shariatmadari takes us on a mind-boggling journey through the science of language, urging us to abandon our prejudices in a bid to uncover the (far more interesting) truth about what we do with words. Exploding nine widely held myths about language while introducing us to some of the fundamental insights of modern linguistics, Shariatmadari is an energetic guide to the beauty and quirkiness of humanity’s greatest achievement.


Don't Believe a Word: The Surprising Truth About Language Related Books

Empires of the Word
Language: en
Pages: 541
Authors: Nicholas Ostler
Categories: Language Arts & Disciplines
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-03-22 - Publisher: Harper Collins

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A “monumental” account of the rise and fall of languages, with “many fresh insights, useful historical anecdotes, and charming linguistic oddities” (Chi
Don't Believe a Word
Language: en
Pages: 0
Authors: David Shariatmadari
Categories: Language Arts & Disciplines
Type: BOOK - Published: 2020-01-07 - Publisher: National Geographic Books

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A linguist’s entertaining and highly informed guide to what languages are and how they function. Think you know language? Think again. There are languages tha
Word and Language
Language: en
Pages: 768
Authors: Roman Jakobson
Categories: Language Arts & Disciplines
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-12-14 - Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Word and World
Language: en
Pages: 440
Authors: Patricia Hanna
Categories: Language Arts & Disciplines
Type: BOOK - Published: 2004 - Publisher:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This important book proposes a new account of the nature of language, founded upon an original interpretation of Wittgenstein. The authors deny the existence of
Electric Language
Language: en
Pages: 324
Authors: Michael Heim
Categories: Language Arts & Disciplines
Type: BOOK - Published: 1999-01-01 - Publisher: Yale University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this book Michael Heim provides the first consistent philosophical basis for critically evaluating the impact of word processing on our use of and ideas abou