How long does it take to read The Power of Babel?
The Power of Babel by John H. McWhorter takes about 6 hours 1 minute to read at 250 words a minute.
About 6 hours 1 minute
A weekend read
First published 2001. 328 pages, about 90,200 words.
13 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 10 hours 1 minute |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 6 hours 1 minute |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 46 minutes |
The page count is the median across 2 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
"There are approximately six thousand languages on Earth today, each a descendant of the tongue first spoken by Homo sapiens some 150,000 years ago. How did they all develop? What happened to the first language?". "In this tour of territory too often claimed by stodgy grammarians, linguistics professor John McWhorter ranges across linguistic theory, geography, history, and pop culture to tell the fascinating story of how thousands of very different languages have evolved from a single, original source in a natural process similar to biological evolution. While laying out how languages mix and mutate over time, he reminds us of the variety within the species that speaks them, and argues that, contrary to popular perception, language is not immutable and hidebound, but a living, dynamic entity that adapts itself to an ever-changing human environment.". "Full of humor and imaginative insight, The Power of Babel draws its illustrative examples from languages around the world, including pidgins, creoles, and nonstandard dialects. McWhorter also discusses current theories on what the first language might have been like, why dialects should not be considered "bad speech," and why most of today's languages will be extinct within one hundred years.". "The first book written for the layperson about the natural history of language, The Power of Babel is a dazzling tour de force that will leave readers anything but speechless."--BOOK JACKET.
Subjects: Historical linguistics, Origin
