Ruth H. Sanders

Every language has a history and—with the exception of a very few—no language exists in a bubble. Ruth Sanders’ German is a quick run through the history of the idea of Germany itself, the country as it formed, it long thread of cultural events and how ALL of that shaped the language that we know as German today. Each of the six chapters covers a chunk of German history and how those events shaped the lives and the language of the German people. There’s only so much time, so much of the history is surface level. From Proto-Indo-European to Modern German, we get a decent overview of how history impacts culture, and how culture impacts language. Even now, there is a push and pull in the German language on new words, much like there are same forces in the culture at large. An interesting book.… (mehr)

Short and easy to read, this book allows the reader to gain a very basic understanding of the history of the German language without a great deal of effort. But there is too much history of the German people which the author does not understand all that well, and too little writing about the language about which the author appears to write with considerably more authority. Why so much history of the Voelkerwanderung and the 16th and 17th centuries, especially the latter, in such a short book? Why be repetitive in a book of this length? The last chapter (6) is the best.… (mehr)