Nicholas Ostler (; born 20 May 1952) is a British scholar and author.

Biography and work

Ostler studied at

Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the f ...

, where he received degrees in

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

, philosophy, and economics. He later studied under

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...

at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

, where he earned his PhD in

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

and

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

. His 2005 book ''Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World'' documents the spread of

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

throughout recorded

human history Human history, also called world history, is the narrative of humanity's past. It is understood and studied through anthropology, archaeology, genetics, and linguistics. Since the invention of writing, human history has been studied throug ...

. The book documents and explains the spread of the various Semitic languages of Mesopotamia, including Akkadian and Aramaic, examines the resilience of Chinese through the centuries, and looks into the differential expansion of Latin in both halves of the Roman Empire, along with the many other expansions of the world's (historical) languages. His 2007 book ''Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin'' looks specifically at the language of the

Romans Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

, both before and after the existence of their

Empire An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...

. The story focuses on the rise, spread, and dominance of

, 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 The Foundation for Endangered Languages is a non-profit organization, registered as Charity 1070616 in England and Wales, founded in 1996. Its current chairman is Nicholas Ostler. It exists to support, enable, and assist the documentation, protect ...

, and lives in

Hungerford Hungerford is a historic market town and civil parish in Berkshire, England, west of Newbury, east of Marlborough, northeast of Salisbury and 60 miles (97 km) west of London. The Kennet and Avon Canal passes through the town alongside the ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. In 2013, he wrote the foreword for Navlipi, the publication of a universal script that deals with phonemic idiosyncrasies inherent in all the world's languages

Works

*'' Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World''. HarperCollins: London and New York, 2005. *''Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin''. HarperCollins in the UK, and Walker & Co. in the USA: London and New York, 2007. *''The Last Lingua Franca: English until the Return to Babel''. Penguin in the UK, and Bloomsbury/Walker Books in the USA. London and New York, 2010. () *''Passwords to Paradise: How Languages Have Re-invented World Religions.''. Bloomsbury. London and New York, 2016.

Notes

References

Author: Nicholas Ostler
HarperCollins. Retrieved 21 January 2007. *Ostler, Nicholas. ''Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World.'' New York: Harper Perennial, 2005.
Author: Nicholas Ostler
AP Watt (literary agent). Retrieved 26 July 2010.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ostler, Nicholas Linguists from the United Kingdom Living people 1952 births 20th-century linguists 21st-century linguists