With his trademark humor and flair, bestselling linguist John McWhorter busts the myths and shares the history of the most controversial language topic of our times: pronouns

The nature of language is to shift and evolve--but every so often, a new usage creates a whole lot of consternation. These days, pronouns are throwing curveballs, and it matters, because pronoun habits die hard. If you need a refresher from eighth-grade English: Pronouns are short, used endlessly, and serve to point and direct, to orient us as to what is meant about who. Him, not her. Me, not you. Pronouns get a heavy workout, and as such, they become part of our hardwiring. To mess with our pronouns is to mess with us.

But many of today's hot-button controversies are nonsense. The singular they has been with us since the 1400s and appears in Shakespeare's works. In fact, many of the supposedly iron-clad rules of grammar are up for debate (Billy and me went to the store is perfectly logical!), and with tasty trivia, unexpected twists, and the weird quirks of early and contemporary English, John McWhorter guides readers on a journey of how our whole collection of these little words emerged and has changed over time.

An essay in origins ... as theoretical as Hawking and Gorst in trying to see into the deep past. McWhorter is a clear and witty writer.-- Harper's

In the first book written for the layperson about the natural history of language, linguistic professor John McWhorter ranges across linguistic theory, geography, history, and pop culture to tell the fascinating story of how thousands of very different languages have evolved from a single, original source in a natural process similar to biological evolution.

There are approximately six thousand languages on Earth today, each a descendant of the tongue first spoken by Homo sapiens some 150,000 years ago. While laying out how languages mix and mutate over time, linguistics professor John McWhorter reminds us of the variety within the species that speaks them, and argues that, contrary to popular perception, language is not immutable and hidebound, but a living, dynamic entity that adapts itself to an ever-changing human environment. Full of humor and imaginative insight, The Power of Babel draws its illustrative examples from languages around the world, including pidgins, Creoles, and nonstandard dialects.

A survey of the quirks and quandaries of the English language, focusing on our strange and wonderful grammar

Why do we say I am reading a catalog instead of I read a catalog? Why do we say do at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, Our Magnificent Bastard Language distills hundreds of years of fascinating lore into one lively history.

Covering such turning points as the little-known Celtic and Welsh influences on English, the impact of the Viking raids and the Norman Conquest, and the Germanic invasions that started it all during the fifth century ad, John McWhorter narrates this colorful evolution with vigor. Drawing on revolutionary genetic and linguistic research as well as a cache of remarkable trivia about the origins of English words and syntax patterns, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue ultimately demonstrates the arbitrary, maddening nature of English-- and its ironic simplicity due to its role as a streamlined lingua franca during the early formation of Britain. This is the book that language aficionados worldwide have been waiting for (and no, it's not a sin to end a sentence with a preposition).

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed linguist John McWhorter argues that an illiberal neoracism, disguised as antiracism, is hurting Black communities and weakening the American social fabric.

Americans of good will on both the left and the right are secretly asking themselves the same question: how has the conversation on race in America gone so crazy? We're told to read books and listen to music by people of color but that wearing certain clothes is appropriation. We hear that being white automatically gives you privilege and that being Black makes you a victim. We want to speak up but fear we'll be seen as unwoke, or worse, labeled a racist. According to John McWhorter, the problem is that a well-meaning but pernicious form of antiracism has become, not a progressive ideology, but a religion--and one that's illogical, unreachable, and unintentionally neoracist.

In Woke Racism, McWhorter reveals the workings of this new religion, from the original sin of white privilege and the weaponization of cancel culture to ban heretics, to the evangelical fervor of the woke mob. He shows how this religion that claims to dismantle racist structures is actually harming his fellow Black Americans by infantilizing Black people, setting Black students up for failure, and passing policies that disproportionately damage Black communities. The new religion might be called antiracism, but it features a racial essentialism that's barely distinguishable from racist arguments of the past.

Fortunately for Black America, and for all of us, it's not too late to push back against woke racism. McWhorter shares scripts and encouragement with those trying to deprogram friends and family. And most importantly, he offers a roadmap to justice that actually will help, not hurt, Black America.

Why do so many African Americans--even comfortably middle-class ones--continue to see racism as a defining factor in their lives?

Columbia University linguistics professor John McWhorter, born at the dawn of the post-Civil Rights era, spent years trying to make sense of this question. In this book he dared to say the unsayable: racism's ugliest legacy is the disease of defeatism that has infected Black America. Losing the Race explores the three main components of this cultural virus: the cults of victimology, separatism, and anti-intellectualism that are making Black people their own worst enemies in the struggle for success. With Losing the Race, a bold new voice rises among Black intellectuals.

Superb. --Steven Pinker

An explanation, a defense, and, most heartening, a celebration. . . . McWhorter demonstrates the 'legitimacy' of Black English by uncovering its complexity and sophistication, as well as the still unfolding journey that has led to its creation. . . . His] intelligent breeziness is the source of the book's considerable charm. --New Yorker

Talking Back, Talking Black is McWhorter's] case for the acceptance of black English as a legitimate American dialect. . . . He ably and enthusiastically breaks down the mechanics. --New York Times Book Review

Linguists have been studying Black English as a speech variety for years, arguing to the public that it is different from Standard English, not a degradation of it. Yet false assumptions and controversies still swirl around what it means to speak and sound black. In his first book devoted solely to the form, structure, and development of Black English, John McWhorter clearly explains its fundamentals and rich history while carefully examining the cultural, educational, and political issues that have undermined recognition of this transformative, empowering dialect.

Talking Back, Talking Black takes us on a fascinating tour of a nuanced and complex language that has moved beyond America's borders to become a dynamic force for today's youth culture around the world.

John McWhorter teaches linguistics, Western civilization, music history, and American studies at Columbia University. A New York Times best-selling author and TED speaker, he is a columnist for CNN.com, a regular contributor to the Atlantic, a frequent guest on CNN and MSNBC, and the host of Slate's language podcast, Lexicon Valley. His books on language include The Power of Babel; Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue; Words on the Move; Talking Back, Talking Black; and The Creole Debate.

A love letter to languages, celebrating their curiosities and smashing assumptions about correct grammar

An eye-opening tour for all language lovers, What Language Is offers a fascinating new perspective on the way humans communicate. from vanishing languages spoken by a few hundred people to major tongues like Chinese, and with copious revelations about the hodgepodge nature of English, John McWhorter shows readers how to see and hear languages as a linguist does.

Packed with big ideas about language alongside wonderful trivia, What Language Is explains how languages across the globe (the Queen's English and Suriname creoles alike) originate, evolve, multiply, and divide. Raising provocative questions about what qualifies as a language (so-called slang does have structured grammar), McWhorter takes readers on a marvelous journey through time and place--from Persia to the languages of Sri Lanka--to deliver a feast of facts about the wonders of human linguistic expression.

Language is always changing, but the way English is spoken today rubs many of us the wrong way. Whether it's the use of literally to mean figuratively, or the way young people use LOL or business jargon like What's the ask?--it often seems as if the language is deteriorating before our eyes.

But the truth is different and a lot less scary. Drawing examples from everyday life and employing a generous helping of humor, John McWhorter shows that these shifts are common to all languages, and that we should embrace these changes, not condemn them.

He opens our eyes to the surprising backstories to words and expressions we use every day. Did you know that silly once meant blessed? Or that ought was the original past tense of owe? Or that the suffix -ly in adverbs is actually a remnant of the word like?

In Words on the Move, McWhorter encourages us to marvel at the dynamism and resilience of the English language, and his book offers a delightful journey where we see that words are ever on the move and our lives are all the richer for it.

Though there is a contingent of linguists who fight the fact, our language is always changing -- not only through slang, but sound, syntax, and words' meanings as well. Debunking the myth of pure standard English, tackling controversial positions, and eschewing politically correct arguments, linguist John McWhorter considers speech patterns and regional accents to demonstrate just how the changes do occur. Wielding reason and humor, McWhorter ultimately explains why we must embrace these changes, ultimately revealing our American English in all its variety, expressiveness, and power.

Saramaccan has been central to various debates regarding the origin and nature of creole languages. Being the most removed of all English-based creoles from European language structure in terms of phonology, morphology and syntax, it has been seen as one of the most extreme instantiations of the creolization process. This is the first full-length description of Saramaccan.

The idea that there is one best English is so intuitively plausible and so relentlessly inculcated in us that it is only natural to attempt to uphold this Standard among our students. Our error is in thinking that anything that deviates from this Standard is wrong. In Spreading the Word, linguist John McWhorter proves that these nonstandard dialects are not bastardizations of Standard English, but alternate variations upon the basic plan of English, of which the Standard is but one.

With a general focus on classroom applications, McWhorter makes accessible to teachers, teacher educators, and administrators basic language principles that are commonly accepted by linguists, but rarely disseminated to a general audience. Using data from several different languages, McWhorter shows that the speech differences we hear in America are qualitatively equivalent to those heard in other parts of the world where the same differences are not considered bad language. He links his thesis not only to prescriptive grammar, but to more immediate issues facing classroom teachers, such as Black English and code switching between Spanish and English. A complete chapter is dedicated to showing how mixture between languages is a worldwide and natural phenomenon, rather than a language-ravaging accident.

Spreading the Word closes with a brief overview of eight of the most spoken languages in this country that are least like English. In doing so, McWhorter helps us come to view the language palette that exists in our classrooms as an asset not a problem. Most of all, he reinforces our best instincts about accepting and celebrating our students language, while giving us solid grounds for doing so.

John McWhorter challenges an enduring paradigm among linguists in this provocative exploration of the origins of plantation creoles. Using a wealth of data--linguistic, sociolinguistic, historical--he proposes that the limited access model of creole genesis is seriously flawed. That model maintains that plantation creole languages emerged because African slaves greatly outnumbered whites on colonial plantations. Having little access to the slaveholders' European languages, the slaves were forced to build a new language from what fragments they did acquire. Not so, says McWhorter, who posits that plantation creole originated in West African trade settlements, in interactions between white traders and slaves, some of whom were eventually transported overseas.

The evidence that most New World creoles were imports traceable to West Africa strongly suggests that the well-established limited access model for plantation creole needs revision. In forcing a reexamination of this basic tenet, McWhorter's book will undoubtedly cause controversy. At the same time, it makes available a vast amount of data that will be a valuable resource for further explorations of genesis theory.

In his first major book on the state of black America since the New York Times bestseller Losing the Race, John McWhorter argues that a renewed commitment to achievement and integration is the only cure for the crisis in the African-American community.

Winning the Race examines the roots of the serious problems facing black Americans today--poverty, drugs, and high incarceration rates--and contends that none of the commonly accepted reasons can explain the decline of black communities since the end of segregation in the 1960s. Instead, McWhorter posits that a sense of victimhood and alienation that came to the fore during the civil rights era has persisted to the present day in black culture, even though most blacks today have never experienced the racism of the segregation era.

McWhorter traces the effects of this disempowering conception of black identity, from the validation of living permanently on welfare to gansta rap's glorification of irresponsibility and violence as a means of protest. He discusses particularly specious claims of racism, attacks the destructive posturing of black leaders and the hip-hop academics, and laments that a successful black person must be faced with charges of acting white. While acknowledging that racism still exists in America today, McWhorter argues that both blacks and whites must move past blaming racism for every challenge blacks face, and outlines the steps necessary for improving the future of black America.

Saramaccan has been central to various debates regarding the origin and nature of creole languages. Being the most removed of all English-based creoles from European language structure in terms of phonology, morphology and syntax, it has been seen as one of the most extreme instantiations of the creolization process. This is the first full-length description of Saramaccan. The grammar documents, in particular, a valence-sensitive system of indicating movement and direction via serial verb constructions, hitherto overlooked amidst the generalized phenomenon of serialization itself.