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Robert Lane Greene
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Talk on the Wild Side: The Untameable Nature of Language Hardcover – September 20, 2018

by Lane Greene (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 59 ratings
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Language is a wild animal: rough, ambiguous, inconsistent in countless ways. But that just makes it all the more tempting to tame it. Many have tried, from sticklers for supposedly correct grammar to inventors of supposedly perfect languages; from software engineers working on machine translation to governments that see language management as politics by another means. But when you enter the lair of a wild beast, you can be lucky to escape with your wits.

Join Lane Greene on a journey of discovery into the deep strangeness of language. Learn why grammar rules can never capture the extraordinary variety of ordinary usage. See what happens when you try to design a language that really makes sense. Find out why, for all the talk of decline in English, no language in recorded history has ever gone to the dogs, or ever could. And learn the fate of those bold individuals who, through heroism or ignorance, ventured to teach their tongue some new tricks.

Previous page
  1. Print length
    240 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Economist Books
  4. Publication date
    September 20, 2018
  5. Dimensions
    5.67 x 0.98 x 8.74 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    9781781258064
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1781258064
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1781258066
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Economist Books; Main edition (September 20, 2018)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781781258064
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1781258064
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.67 x 0.98 x 8.74 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 59 ratings

About the author

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Robert Lane Greene

Robert Lane Greene

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Robert Lane Greene is a journalist based in New York. He is a correspondent for The Economist and writes for the magazine's Johnson blog on language. His book on the politics of language around the world, You Are What You Speak, was published by Delacorte (Random House) in Spring 2011. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, Slate and other publications, and he wrote a biweekly column for the New Republic from 2002-2004. He is a frequent television and radio commentator, an advisor to Freedom House, an adjunct assistant professor in the Center for Global Affairs at New York University, and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Greene was born in Johnson City, Tennessee and grew up in Marietta, Georgia. He graduated with honors from Tulane University in 1997, receiving a B.A. in International Relations and History. He won a Marshall Scholarship and completed an M.Phil. in European Politics and Society at the University of Oxford in 1999. He is fluent in German, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Danish, and conversant in Russian, Arabic, and Italian. He joined The Economist in 2000, lives in Brooklyn, is married to Eva Høier Greene, and has two sons.

(Photo credit: Nephi Niven)

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
59 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Alissa Stern
5.0 out of 5 stars The Wild Beast
Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2018
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For all the talking, reading and posting we do, Lane Green’s Talk on the Wild Side makes us realize how little time we spend thinking about language and how it works.

Playfully posed through Sherlock, Berenstain Bears or Donald Trump, nearly every chapter posits something fascinating for the reader to ponder: “When minorities are treated as though they don’t speak a ‘real’ language, they’ll often decide that the only way to get respect…is to fight for a real country. And that’s when the trouble begins”. Or, the more speakers a language has, the fewer the bits of information about number, gender, tense, etc. are attached to words as affixes. Or, there is a way to show children that “what they learned at home is one way to use the language, and that school will teach them another.”

Intellectually compelling as many of these questions are, the real gift of Green’s book is to “give the reader a reason to approach language with a sense of wonder.” The reader will be awed.
2 people found this helpful
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A M
4.0 out of 5 stars Some parts are interesting while other parts are somewhat repetitive
Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2019
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The book reviews various academic disputes related to language. The reviews about invented languages and phonetics are interesting. The reviews about the disputes between those who dictate how we should speak and those who just describe the uses of language (Prescriptive vs. Descriptive) are somewhat repetitive and as a result boring.
One person found this helpful
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Rich
5.0 out of 5 stars The year's must-read book for word nerds and language lovers of all stripes
Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2019
With "Talk on the Wild Side," Lane Greene upholds his reputation as one of the world's best -- and certainly funniest -- authorities on language. He's the smartest guy at the word-nerd bar, holding forth all evening on language with a seemingly inexhaustible range. Greene touches on grammar, linguistics, dialects, speech, accents, usage, politics, technology, and translation -- it's the ultimate intro guide to the wide world of language.

Most interestingly, Greene espouses a view of language as a growing, living entity, where meaning and even pronunciation naturally and inevitably shift over time. The book can also be viewed as a friendly diatribe against those popular "grammar grouch" works that purport to lay down "the rules" of language, speech, and writing. Greene shows that rules are always just someone's preferences, arising at certain junctures of history -- either accidentally or as an expression of power -- and thus encourages a more expansive view of language, where its sheer mutability is a thing to be admired and embraced.

"Talk on the Wild Side" will leave you with hundreds of language-related factoids to pepper your own conversations, and will certainly pique your interest in exploring the various topics Greene touches upon in its pages. I definitely also recommend Greene's first work, "You Are What You Speak," and his long-standing work for The Economist.

Looking forward to seeing what Greene will explore in his next book!
One person found this helpful
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D. Brown
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and fun
Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2018
This is a fun and interesting book, written with the curiosity of a naturalist who happens to be a great story-teller -- the book is something like "The Botany of Desire" for language. There are lots of well chosen examples (and counter-examples) of words and sentences, and the highlight for me were the historical stories and references that demonstrate how language evolves. This is a well-researched book, with a perspective across both time and geography that goes beyond English to include languages from all over the world. I particularly enjoyed how he distinguished between spoken and written languages, and emphasized the importance of the spoken version -- that was unexpected since he writes for a major newspaper (The Economist). He makes a compelling case against the complaints of curmudgeons about the decline of language ("Kids these days!"), which got me to reconsider some of my own opinions. I'll be giving it as a gift to a few people on my shopping list this holiday season. Recommended!
4 people found this helpful
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Konstantin
5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging, terrific meditation on language's limits--and its possibiltiies
Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2018
Who murdered whom? You did. And so did I.

This lucid amble through modern linguistics and usage is, among other things, an objective case study of how and why we abandoned the objective case. It's hard to write a fun book about grammar, but that's what Greene has done here. His writes with ease derived from authority, guiding the reader through fraught debates about right and wrong in speech and writing. He skewers half-learned grammar scolds, explains the shortcomings of failed attempts to artificially create perfect languages like Esperanto and Lojban, and just plain has fun explaining the nuances of how language works, both at its most and least effective.

The perfect gift for anyone who uses words. I hardly put it down after I started reading.
2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Brooklyn_transplant
5.0 out of 5 stars Finally a fun book about language that gets it right
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 14, 2018
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I'm not a professional linguist but I care about language, especially how we think about and the conclusions we draw from it. This book is excellent in explaining why everyone should calm themselves down a bit, and appreciate language for what it really is - a wild animal, with its own internal logic, not a sedate lap dog that'll do tricks on demand. There's a lot of unscientific mumbo-jumbo conclusions out there on language, the nature of language and how we ought to learn it and wield it, and many of those are little more than pedantic class policing, illogical pseudo-science and lazy thinking protecting holy cows, nothing that holds up to actual scrutiny. The author hilariously sorts the wheat from the chaff, explains how language actually works, and how it doesn't - I had a lot of "oh my gosh, yes of course, why did I never see that before?" moments. I feel very able to enter conversations about grammar, about usage and about, yes, linguistics now (in fact I'm itching to take down a few choice family members' arguments over the holidays), now that I am armed with some sound knowledge and hilarious examples. This was a genuinely fun read - if you've ever been confounded by a illogical grammar rule or wondered just why folks get *so* intense about language (perhaps even, including yourself), this is the book for you.
8 people found this helpful
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Alena Vibert
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent service
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 8, 2021
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Great service, arrived very quickly and husband pleased with an interesting book.
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A E Swain
5.0 out of 5 stars enthralling and entertaining.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 26, 2019
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I loved this book, packed with detail, humour and humanity. I really appreciate the author's basic premise of the living quality of langauge and how we, as humans, use it.
One person found this helpful
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EJS
5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely readable and well researched
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 23, 2019
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A brilliant, interesting and highly readable book for those interested in the nature of language.
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