I bought this thinking it would be philological in nature, but it turned out to be something else entirely; a history of the spread (and decline in many cases) of the use of major languages throughout history. Traditional philology gets only fleeting mentions. If the author is to be believed, such a thing has never been attempted before.

Hence I was less interested than I had hoped, but that isn't the fault of the author - and I wasn't totally uninterested, either. Parts of the book, mainly those overlapping with pre-existing interests of mine, were fascinating, other parts were a bit of a grind. The basic idea of examining how conventional historical processes (e.g. military, colonial, mercantile, migrational, religious, technological) impact the use, spread and decline of languages did seem interesting and original, particularly the generalising conclusions but, oddly, they come before the detailed exposition they are derived from.

Strongly recommended to history buffs - not so much to anybody else.

Elisabeth I not only legalised English translations of the Bible but Welsh ones, too!

The arrival of widespread printed books rapidly fixed the standard versions of European languages e.g. the London dialect of English, Luther's German (in another Biblical translation).

Two (different) passages of English are quoted on facing pages, one from 1258, the other from 1385. The first is unintelligible to me. (I can recognise a few words.) The second I readily understood with barely more effort than I need to read contemporary English. A remarkable transformation in 2 1/4 centuries!

The Norman invasion and subsequent use of Norman French for court affairs had the counter-intuitive effect of spreading the use of English into previously staunchly Celtic language speaking regions.

When the Imperial Spanish arrived in the Americas there were >2000 native languages.