Ad Infinitum - Nicholas Ostler

London, 2009. XVII,382p. Paperback. Pages a bit yellowed due to paper quality.Antiquarian Titel: Ad Infinitum. Auteur: OSTLER, N.,
'At first glance, Nicholas Ostler?s Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin looks like it might belong to the popularizing category. 'Nowadays,' he begins, 'Latin seems a comical language,' and he goes on to refer to Monty Python?s character Biggus Dickus. But this is part of a recusatio - this is not going to be a jokey book, though it entertains as well as edifies and will prove as interesting to the Latinist as to the layman. Refreshingly, this book is serious and scholarly, though it wears its considerable learning lightly, and in a world of increasing Anglophone hegemony and globalization against a backdrop of the rapid extinction of thousands of languages, its implications are thought provoking. By calling this history of Latin a 'biography', Ostler personifies his subject; but there is also an inherent contrast in his two-part title. Ad infinitum - to infinity and beyond - suggests that Latin will go on and on; 'biography' not only gives Latin a 'life' but makes Latin mortal, for the definitive biography cannot really be written until near the end of a life. He takes for his subject, the life, the extraordinary career, of Latin over the millennia - language of Empire, of the Church, of scholarship, and of Europe: Where did Latin go right? Like any good biographer, Ostler displays an encyclopedic familiarity with his subject, but not a blind, uncritical admiration. As he points out, over the Latin continuum that extended from the dawn of Rome to the Enlightenment, Latin was essentially inward looking - all roads led into Rome, not out of it. At one point Latin was spoken throughout the known world (but the known world was defined, conveniently, as that which spoke Latin). (...) Ostler also has a biographer?s flair for quotation and anecdote, and a knack for that lost art, the note. These are always worth wading into. (...) Ostler pithily explains grammatical points. (...) Perhaps one of the most interesting chapters is on Latin America. Here Latin, empire, and the Church combined in unexpected ways. The rapacious drive for conquest was sanctioned under the banner of converting souls, and to convert souls, one needed bilinguals and, eventually, a population of native priests. Their knowledge of Latin grammar gave the missionaries the tools to learn and systematically map the grammar of native languages. (...) Besides a passion for Latin, Ostler has a more complex interest in the success of Latin. He is chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, which is concerned with the rapid extinction of these human resources. His interest in Latin is set off by an interest in Etruscan, singled out in the chapter 'Latin?s Etruscan Stepmother.' (A.E. STALLINGS, The American Scholar, 2008).