Reversing Language Shift: How to Re-awaken a Language Tradition: Proceedings of the Conference FEL Xiv, 13-15 September 2010, Carmarthen Wales ... Languages)

by Nicholas Ostler

The Proceedings of the 14th conference of the Foundation for Endangered Languages (held 13-15 September 2010 in Carmarthen, South Wales). The topic is how languages may be returned to a flourishing state from comparative decline. It contains 22 papers from all over the world.

195 pages, Perfect Paperback

First published October 1, 2010

About the author

Nicholas Ostler is a British scholar and author. Ostler studied at Balliol College, Oxford, where he received degrees in Greek, Latin, philosophy, and economics. He later studied under Noam Chomsky at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his Ph.D. in linguistics and Sanskrit.

His 2005 book Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World documents the spread of language throughout recorded human history.

His 2007 book Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin looks specifically at the language of the Romans, both before and after the existence of their Empire. The story focuses on the rise, spread, and dominance of Latin, both among other languages of the Italian peninsula in the early part of the 1st millennium BC and among the languages of Western Europe in the Dark Ages and beyond, presenting the life of Latin as any biographer would present the life of his subject. With this book, Ostler provides a strong argument against the label 'dead language' so often assigned to Latin. However, the title, 'Ad Infinitum,' refers not to this, but to his thesis that the Latin-speaking world was unconscious of its own limits, looking always back to its centre, rather than outwards.

He is currently the chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, and lives in Bath, England.