Don't Believe A Word

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The Surprising Truth About Language

'Wonderful ... You finish the book more alive than ever to the enduring mystery and miracle of that thing that makes us most human' Stephen Fry

'Fascinating and thought-provoking . . . crammed with weird and wonderful facts' MAIL ON SUNDAY

THINK YOU KNOW LANGUAGE? THINK AGAIN

A word's origin doesn't tell you what it means today

There are languages that change when your mother-in-law is present

Mistakes don't undermine English, they lay its foundations

The language you speak could make you more prone to accidents

'Untranslatable' words are usually anything but

There's a special part of the brain that produces swear words

The truth is so much more interesting than the rumours . . .

Over the past few decades, we have reached new frontiers of linguistic knowledge. Linguists can now explain how and why language changes, describe its structures, and map its activity in the brain. But most of us know as much about language today as we did about physics before Galileo, and the little we know is still largely based on folklore, instinct or hearsay.

In DON'T BELIEVE A WORD linguist David Shariatmadari takes us on a mind-boggling journey through the science of language, urging us to abandon our prejudices in a bid to uncover the (far more interesting) truth about what we do with words. Exploding nine widely-held myths about language while introducing us to some of the fundamental insights of modern linguistics, David Shariatmadari is an energetic guide to the beauty and quirkiness of humanity's greatest achievement.

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