Informative little book of language

In this little book linguist David Crystal usefully sums
up the history of the the thing that sets the homo sapiens apart from
all other animals, language. Written with a younger and non-linguist audience
in mind it is especially joyful to read the well layouted little book
and review known things about language and learn some new things along
the way.
He beautifullly introduces the reader to the subject and splits it neatly
into 40 interesting chapters, one of them for example ethymology: That
the word salary comes from the salaire of the Roman soldierst might be
known, but that the same root is in sausage and also in the Spanish salsa
is probably a lesser known fact.
He also includes tweeting and facebooking, modern an ancient word plays,
maybe you know what anagrams are, but not what palindromes and lipograms
are?
How language came to be is universal, still the German language is referenced
a couple of times in particular, when it comes to its close connection
with English.

Author David Crystal, Honorary Professor of Linguistics at the University
of Wales, Bangor is one of the world’s peeminent language specialists.
He also writes an interesting Blog: http://david-crystal.blogspot.com

David Crystal, A little book of language, Yale University Press, 272
pages, English