Don't Believe a Word

Don't Believe a Word by David Shariatmadari

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If you are a language nerd, then you will start finding that books on linguistics begin to run together. They often make the same revelations and cover the same territory. This book had a lot of that going on.

Nonetheless, each such book has its own nuance. This book had enough new details to make it stand out. For example, to boil it down to a nub, it seems that Noam Chomsky's universal grammar is probably passe. The author makes the point that language is a tool and we should expect tools to work in certain ways if they are to get their job done. That is the reason, rather than some deeply buried genetic grammar gene, that languages have similar features. As a dabbler in this area, I hadn't realized that Chomsky was passe (or maybe going passe.)

Shariatmadari also made some interesting points about language density. People can comprehend only so much, so denser languages are slower, and faster languages are less dense.

Shariatmadari's writing was accessible. I enjoyed his presentation and the material in this book.