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    Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin
    Unavailable
    Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin
    Unavailable
    Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin
    Ebook574 pages9 hours

    Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin

    By Ostler and Nicholas Ostler

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    Currently unavailable

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    About this ebook

    The Latin language has been the one constant in the cultural history of the West for more than two millennia. It has been the foundation of our education, and has defined the way in which we express our thoughts, our faith, and our knowledge of how the world functions. Indeed, the language has proved far more enduring than its empire in Rome, its use echoing on in the law codes of half the world, in the terminologies of modern science, and until forty years ago, in the liturgy of the Catholic Church. It is the unseen substance that makes us members of the Western world.

    In his erudite and entertaining "biography," Nicholas Ostler shows how and why (against the odds, through conquest from within and without) Latin survived and thrived even as its creators and other languages failed. Originally the dialect of Rome and its surrounds, Latin supplanted its neighbors to become, by conquest and settlement, the language of all Italy, and then of Western Europe and North Africa. Its cultural creep toward Greek in the East led it to copy and then ally with it in an unprecedented, but invincible combination: Greek theory and Roman practice, delivered through Latin, became the foundation of Western civilization. Christianity, a latecomer, then joined the alliance, and became vital to Latin's survival when the empire collapsed. Spoken Latin re-emerged as a host of new languages, from Portuguese and Spanish in the west to Romanian in the east. But a knowledge of Latin lived on as the common code of European thought, and inspired the founders of Europe's New World in the Americas. E pluribus unum.

    Illuminating the extravaganza of its past, Nicholas Ostler makes clear that, in a thousand echoes, Latin lives on, ad infinitum.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 1995
    ISBN9780802718402
    Unavailable
    Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin

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    Reviews for Ad Infinitum

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      A good popular history of Latin, written engagingly. The images are inconsistent and poorly reproduced, which is unfortunate; if better, they would have complemented the text well.
    • 4/5
      I read all the footnotes in this book. How often can you (well, I) say that?
    • 3/5
      In Ad Infinitum, Nicholas Ostler has created a biography of Latin, giving the history of the language from "birth" to present day. Along the way, he treats the interaction between the language and changes in the societies that use the language, showing the feedback loop in which events and customs change language while language guides events and customs. The discussion of the origin of Latin was the most interesting part of the history for me. I'm little more than a linguistic novice, but had very little difficulty understanding his comparisons of Latin with other concurrent languages such as Etruscan and the discussion of why Latin in particular won out over its competitors. I also really liked his description of the interplay between Greek and Latin, and correspondingly between Greek culture and Roman culture as well. Frankly, though, the second half of the book lagged for me. After the Medieval period, the world grew away from Latin, and in the process, the story of the language becomes much less interesting. My recommendation - pay attention to the first half of the book and treat the second half more lightly.