McWhorter likens linguistic change to Darwin’s theory of evolution, arguing that languages, like animals and plants, inevitably split into subvarieties, alter in response to environmental pressures and evolve new forms and useless features. In prose that is bold and compelling, he warns against seeing grammar as a repository of culture, arguing that it is more often formed by chance and convenience and does not reflect its speakers’ world view any more than “a pattern of spilled milk reveals anything specific about the bottle it came from.” His theory is slightly undermined by careless errors: a Latin sentence he has composed, on which his first chapter rests, has four mistakes in nine words. (Later, rather amazingly, he bungles the masculine and neuter forms of illa, the basic word for “that.”)
Rather than disassociating languages from the people who speak them, Dalby takes on the difficult but equally rewarding challenge of drawing out the distinct consciousness expressed by each tongue. As Babel becomes homogenized, surviving languages have fewer new words and ideas to draw on. Without Greek there would be no “wine-dark sea.” We would not “bury the hatchet” if American Indians hadn’t done it already.
Why are these languages disappearing? Globalization is the modern equivalent of Genghis Khan, both authors argue. English is now competently spoken by about 1.8 billion people worldwide. Parents consider it the key to a more prosperous life. Fearing that without fluency in the languages of the cultures of “tall buildings” their children will be deprived of standardized education and the ability to reap the rewards of international trade, they allow their own tongues to die off with the elderly. Dalby and McWhorter rewrite the script on language change from nearly opposite but equally intelligent perspectives, agreeing on the most significant point: if our rich linguistic heritage is not preserved, even English speakers may find themselves uncomfortably lost for words.
