Language
Last updated: August 04, 2025
If you're interested in books about language or languages, you can find our book recommendation interviews listed below. We have a range of interviews related to language in general, including recommendations of books on the history and philosophy of language, linguistics, the relationship of language to the brain and many more.
Books about the English language: the basics of grammar and punctuation, or, once you've got the hang of those, how to write well.
Foreign languages:
Books for learning French; best books for learning Spanish
Books for learning 'dead' languages, including Latin or Ancient Greek or Egyptian hieroglyphs.
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History in English Words
by Owen Barfield -
The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language
by Mark Forsyth -
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
by Oxford University Press -
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
by Simon Winchester -
The F-Word
by Jesse Sheidlower
The Best Books on Etymology
The Best Books on Etymology
Are you an autodidactic maven of sesquipedalian verbosity? Do you venerate periphrasis, or simply revel in linguistic disquisition? If so, you might enjoy our selection of books on etymology, as recommended over the years by our expert interviewees.
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1
Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues
by Ross Perlin -
2
Poems from the Edge of Extinction: An Anthology of Poetry in Endangered Languages
ed. Chris McCabe -
3
One & Everything
by Sam Winston -
4
Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages
by Lorna Gibb -
5
Babel: An Arcane History
by R. F. Kuang
The best books on Endangered Languages, recommended by Samantha Ellis
The best books on Endangered Languages, recommended by Samantha Ellis
Of the world’s 7000 languages, around half are expected to be extinct by the end of this century. Samantha Ellis’s mother tongue is one of them. We asked her to reflect on what we lose when we lose a way of speaking—culturally, linguistically, emotionally—and to recommend five books about endangered languages.
The best books on Language and the Mind, recommended by Lane Greene
Does the world look different in other languages? Are there words that cannot be translated? Is it OK to say disinterested when you mean uninterested? Lane Greene, who writes the Economist’s “Johnson” column on language, dispels some of the popular but misguided ideas many of us have about language.
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1
Language, Thought, and Reality
by Benjamin Lee Whorf -
2
The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality
by Karl Popper -
3
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
by David Deutsch -
4
Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe
by Hugo Mercier -
5
The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't
by Julia Galef
The best books on Language and Post-Truth, recommended by Nick Enfield
The best books on Language and Post-Truth, recommended by Nick Enfield
The word ‘post-truth’ may only have entered the Oxford English Dictionary in the last decade, but the phenomenon it describes is much older and deeper, connected not so much to the latest internet trend as the fundamentals of human cognition and communication. Here, linguistic anthropologist Nick Enfield, a professor at the University of Sydney and a member of its fighting truth decay research node, introduces the best books to get thinking about the complex relationship between language and reality.
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1
Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and Profanity in English
by Geoffrey Hughes -
2
What the F: What Swearing Reveals about Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves
by Benjamin K Bergen -
3
The F-Word
by Jesse Sheidlower -
4
Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word
by Randall Kennedy -
5
The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
by Steven Pinker
The best books on Swearing, recommended by Melissa Mohr
The best books on Swearing, recommended by Melissa Mohr
Linguistically, swear words are unique—they can shock and offend, are processed differently in the brain, and saying them may allow you to withstand pain for longer. But where do they get their distinctive power? And how has this changed over time? Melissa Mohr gives us a badmouthed tour of the best fucking books on swearing . . .
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1
Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech
by Edward Sapir -
2
Language In Relation To A Unified Theory Of The Structure Of Human Behaviour
by Kenneth Pike -
3
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax
by Noam Chomsky -
4
On Understanding Grammar
by Talmy Givón -
5
Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing & Discursive Commitment
by Robert Brandom
The best books on Language and Thought, recommended by Daniel L. Everett
The best books on Language and Thought, recommended by Daniel L. Everett
The linguist argues that all language has a basis in culture and explains how Chomsky is like Freud: crucial, but crucially wrong. He chooses five of the best books on linguistics.
The best books on Translation, recommended by Edith Grossman
The award-winning literary translator Edith Grossman discusses books on and of translation that inspired her, and considers the trade-off that every translator faces, between fidelity and meaning
The best books on Language, recommended by Henry Hitchings
The wordsmith and cultural historian debunks common myths about English, recommends the smartest writing about words, and says apostrophes are “orthographic squiggles” not worth fighting for.
The best books on The Philosophy of Language, recommended by Scott Soames
When you study the philosophy of language, you study the languages of logic, mathematics, and science, and not just English, French, and German. Philosopher Scott Soames picks the best books on the philosophy of language.
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1
Ptolemaic Alexandria
by P.M. Fraser -
2
Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship
by Anthony Grafton -
3
Prolegomena to Homer
by Friedrich August Wolf -
4
Lectures on the Religion of the Semites
by William Robertson Smith -
5
The Liberal Education of Charles Eliot Norton
by James Turner
The best books on Philology, recommended by James Turner
The best books on Philology, recommended by James Turner
Intellectual historian James Turner describes how the once vast and unified field of philology was chopped up in the 20th century to make the different disciplines of the humanities.
