书名：The Power of Babel: A nature history of language 巴别塔的力量
作者：John McWhorter
出版社名称：Harper Perennial
出版时间：2003
语种：英文
ISBN：9780060520854
商品尺寸：13.3x2.1 x20.3 cm
包装：平装
页数：330

The Power of Babel《巴别塔的力量》是美国加利福尼亚大学语言学教授约翰·麦克沃特的代表作。本书适合英语语言学专业以及对语言学及英语学习感兴趣的朋友品读。
推荐理由：
1.探索人类语言进化的奥秘，涵盖语言学及历史知识，知识面广，可读性高；
2.书中附有作者简介、研究语言学的初衷、文本注释等，让读者了解作者创作这本书背后的故事；
3.文风幽默，例证丰富，条理清晰，非常适合语言学入门；
4.英文原版，无删减，有助于提高文学素养和英文水平。
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.
In thisentertaining romp through territory too often claimed by stodgy grammarians, 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, linguistics professor John McWhorter 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.

The Power of Babel《巴别塔的力量》作者不单单从全球成千上万的语言中，提取有效例证进行论述，还在文中探讨现有理论关于母语的特征、方言的不可替代及为什么说很多语言将会在一百年之后逐渐消亡等问题。整篇文章颇负幽默感及想象空间的洞察力，带我们探索语言的世界。
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 in one hundred years.

约翰·麦克沃特，美国加利福尼亚大学伯克利分校区语言学副教授。著有《街头流言：披露标准英语的真相》及畅销书《比赛失败：非裔美国人的自我放任》
John McWhorter, associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author ofThe Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of a“pure” Standard Englishand the bestsellingLosing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America. He lives in Oakland, California.

   Introduction简介
1  The First Language Morphs into Six Thousand New Ones母语演变成六万种全新的语言
2  The Six Thousand Languages Develop into Clusters of Sublanguages六万种语言演变成次语言群集
3  The Thousands of Dialects Mix with One Another数以千计的方言相互渗透
4  Some Languages Are Crushed to Powder but Rise Again as New ones部分语言的灭绝与重生
5  The Thousands of Dialects of Thousands of languages All Developed Far Beyond the Call of Duty成千上万的方言及语言的演变已远远逾越它的使命召唤
6  Some Languages Get Genetically Altered and Frozen部分语言已从根本上发生改变及逐渐刻板
7  Most of the World’s languages Went Extinct世界上大部分语言已经灭绝
   Epilogue:“Extra, Extra! The Language of Adam and Eve!” 结语：“号外，号外！亚当和夏娃的语言”
   Notes注释
   Acknowledgements致谢
   Index索引

I fell in lovefor the first time at four years old. Her name was Shirley and we were both in a piano class. She wore burgundy overalls, which I for some reason found immensely charming (I seriously doubt if she actually wore these overalls every day as if she were aPeanutscharacter, but that’s how she is preserved in my memory); she had laughing brown eyes and a high-spirited yet intelligent demeanor. I was intoxicated and, as it happened, we got along quite well.
I’m not sure of exactly what kind of trajectory I imagined us to be on, but whatever it was, it was upward—until one day after a lesson when we went outside tojoin our respective parents. Watching her joyously greet her family, I was shocked to hear that as soon as she started talking to them, I couldn’t understand what they were saying! This was the first time in my life that I had ever known that there were languages other than English, and it remains the profoundest shock I have ever encountered in my entire life. They were clearly communicating, just as I was with my mother, butI couldn’t understand what they were saying!