"The Unfolding of Language" by Guy Deutscher

A couple of days ago I finished reading The Unfolding of Language : An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention by Guy Deutscher. Wow, it's exhausting just to say the name, imagine what it felt like to read the book. But, seriously the work is intellectually challenging and often provoked me to engage in thoughts on the ever changing state of human language. And yes, metaphors are the erodent of language (in case you were wondering). Many times I found myself reminiscing about the complexity of the ancestral expressions. By the way, anyone who thinks modern language is more intricate than say Latin or ancient Babylonian needs to pick up this book. Mr. Deutscher’s analysis seemed logical enough to make me a believer that dead languages were a lot more eloquent than modern ones. But this is where interesting stops and tedious begins. I felt this book was geared toward students in linguistics as oppose to the average reader (my apologies to the author, but I’m a graduate in business). At times it seemed Mr. Deutscher couldn’t make up his mind on what to include in the actual body of the book and what to leave in the Appendixes (and trust me, there is a lot that should’ve been left in the Appendixes). For example, consonances and grammatical rules of African languages did little to entice my eagerness to immerse myself in the constructs of language. Often I had to go back and reread some pages forcing myself to ascertain their usefulness and applicability in my daily life (unsuccessfully, if I may add). I expected the 'evolutionary tour' to include historical aspects of the human evolution, but...oh well. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t recommend this book. Instead, for those readers interested in introductory material into the evolution of language (masterfully coupled with historical analysis) I recommend Genes, Peoples, and Languages by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza.

- by Simon Cleveland