I think there were too many errors in the book as well. Although learning all the languages in the book would be difficult (but certainly not impossible, except perhaps with respect to Phoenician given that we don't have enough extant material to fully know it), certainly Ostler could have had specialists quickly fact-check the various chapters.
His assessment of why languages like Egyptian and Chinese don't catch on is pretty accurate. Large, populous and xenophobic nations with extremely complicated writing systems do not create a vehicle for the dissemination of language. While it's amusing to watch all the soccer moms try (largely in vain) to teach their children Chinese, it's clear that Chinese is not going to displace English as a language of global trade, finance or science - ever. Some other language may displace English in the future, but not Chinese - ever.
The hypothesis in the book is overreaching, though. He could have just boiled it down to a few points:
Languages spread and endure in book-based religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) but not in other types of religions (like Buddhism or even Hinduism).
Languages really aren't spread because of trade.
Cultural domination spreads languages but the strength of that spread is tied to the ease of learning the language.
Empire spreads languages, but those imperial languages will only remain after the fall of the empire if there is some other utility to them.
That's it, really.
In today's increasingly globalized world, one might be forgiven for wondering if one day the world's 5000 or so different languages will be reduced to just one, as seen sometimes in science fiction novels. And if so, English with its status as the undisputed lingua franca of the Internet and communication technology seems like an obvious candidate.
It may happen and it may not, but history suggests more likely not; world history is full of once-widely spread languages reduced after a few centuries to a handful of speakers, or none. At the same time, some very modest languages have survived with remarkably few changes for much longer than anyone could've predicted.
In this book, the author claims (perhaps a little arrogantly) to be the first to study systematically on a global level why some languages endure and others do not; he aims to go beyond the specific historic circumstances of any specific language, in an attempt to identify general determining factors.
In today's English-dominated world, nobody really stops to think why English is so widely spoken among Indians, while few if any Indonesians have any fluency in Dutch; but as Ostler shows, it could just as easily have been the other way around. In Latin-America, Spanish and Portuguese have almost completely supplanted all native languages, including those of the glorious Aztec and Inca Empires - except in little Paraguay, where virtually all of the population remains fluent in the modest Native American language Guarani. Among the three Northwest Semitic "sisters" - Aramaic, Phoenician and Hebrew - the two that once dominated the Middle East and the Mediterranean respectively have died or all but died, while the more modest Hebrew lives on (or at least resurrected itself) more than two thousand years later. Besides pure coincidence, are there factors that could explain those and countless other cases of widely spread languages that vanish entirely in a generation, and modest ones that survive against all odds?
I'm not sure I'm convinced that he really succeeds in answering this question, but the book is fascinating regardless, even if it's just a succession of histories of a good number of historically important languages (Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, Aramaic, Chinese, Greek, Phoenician, Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic, Nahuatl, Quechua, Spanish, French, English and Russian are the main ones). Each chapter contains a number of long or short quotes in the languages discussed along with a translation and if necessary transcription, which by itself is already a pretty good reason to buy the book, for those among us who have a slight or not-so slight obsession with learning languages (you know who you are).
As you might expect from a book with goals as ambitious as this one, there are omissions, mistakes or dubious generalizations to be found in some chapters - it's impossible to be an expert on all these languages at the same time. Still, on the whole it's an impressive and fascinating work, particularly for language lovers. But even for monolingual readers who are willing to put some effort into it, it can be a fascinating book not only for its history lessons, but also for the broad overview of how radically different languages can be, and how they can affect the way one views the world.
ἡ δὲ κἀκ τριῶν τρυπημάτων ἐργαζομένη ἐνεκάλει τῇ φύσει, δυσφορουμένη, ὅτι δὴ μὴ καὶ τοὺς τιτθοὺς αὐτῇ εὐρύτερον ἢ νῦν εἰσι τρυπώη, ὅπως καὶ ἄλλην ἐνταῦθα μίξιν ἐπιτεχνᾶσθαι δυνατὴ εἴη. – Procopius
Ummaka qinnassa nīk!
*MySmiley*
