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Multilingual Europe: reflections on language and identity

occupied by different languages is incompatible or fully distinct. In Chapter 9 (‘What Verse and Verbal Art Can Weave’), Evans draws attention to another aspect of language that reflects the link among culture, linguistic structures and thought: specialised aesthetic practices like jokes, language-games and poetry. These forms of language are often unique to speech communities; they also exploit the grammatical and lexical forms available to a particular language, so that they come to have their own ‘feel’ to them; they are frequently employed to capture and transmit culturally significant themes. Evans thus shows how the threads of language, thought and culture are woven into a complex and beautiful tapestry. He concludes with the observation that much of this global linguistic virtuosity cannot really be captured by written descriptions. As a vibrant and dynamic activity, verbal artistry disappears with the language. Thus, we should at least be concerned to record what we can while we can. The fifth and final part of the book (‘Listening While We Can’) consists of a single chapter and focuses more directly on language endangerment. Evans conveys the stories of several ‘last speakers’, explains the process of language shift, and discusses why there is some uncertainty in predicting the number of languages likely to become extinct in the coming century. This ground is well covered in the literature on language endangerment, and Evans does a good job in summarising enough of it to bring the unfamiliar reader up to speed, but he does not rehash the material in depth. He concludes with an agenda for descriptive linguistics in light of the fact that the world’s linguistic diversity is going to be severely diminished in the coming decades. Dying Words is an excellent example of how linguists should communicate with a broad audience about their craft. Every chapter unpacks the complexity of human language in a way that leads the reader to marvel and want to know more. In doing so, the value of language as a trove of human knowledge is made obvious, as is the cost of language death.