5 Ultramodern Language Books for Language Nerds
Hello, language curiosos! Whether you’re a longtime language nerd or you’re interested in linguistics but not sure where to start, here are five books to feed your curiosity.
I say “ultramodern” because all of these books were published within the last decade. In fact, all but one of the books on this list were published in (what I’m calling) the Peri-/Post-Covid Era. Like many, I divide time according to this warped wormhole period of human history. Time is now pre-, peri-, or post-Covid. Now that we’re on the other end, it feels more fitting to refer to the latest and greatest, super up-to-date happenings as “post-Covid.”
Nevertheless, please enjoy my contemporary, curated cabinet of recommendations. From pop linguistics to fantasy, I’ve got you covered.
1. “Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words”
Author ✍️ Anne Curzan | linguist, professor
Published 📢 2024, Penguin Random House
Genre 📚 Nonfiction
Topic 📌 Grammar rules, language pet peeves, prescriptivism
You should read this if…you’re looking for a multifaceted usage guide, and you’re ready to confront your own language biases (we all have some) in an open-minded way.
A lot of people assume that linguists will take their side on language pet peeves and help them explain why language “standards” should remain…wrong! What we’re really doing when in earshot of someone airing out their language pet peeves is making mental notes about language attitudes in the wild. And then doing our best to explain why certain attitudes are misguided. Some biases are really hard to dispel, even for pros, because they wormed their way deep into your brain at some point, likely during grade school. Curzan guides readers through a discussion of our language biases, explaining where they originated, debunking their mythological power, and crafting an invitation to get curious about other people’s (and our own) language choices. She challenges you to replace judgment (what she calls your “inner grammando”) with curiosity (your “inner wordie”).
2. “Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language”
Author ✍️ Gretchen McCulloch | internet linguist
Published 📢 2019, Penguin Random House
Genre 📚 Nonfiction
Topic 📌 Internet linguistics, new wave sociolinguistics
You should read this if…you’re looking for a fun, down-to-earth read about the origins and changing landscape of how we talk to each other online.
When we think of writing, we normally conjure up images of books and newspapers, academia and publishers — mostly forms of authoritative, top-down language. But language is really a bottom-up, grass-roots project. “In technological terms,” McCulloch says, “language is humanity’s most spectacular open source project,” and the internet is at the forefront of changing how we communicate with one another. The digital age is transforming written language, particularly the distinct genre of informal writing, and McColloch is here to deconstruct it, touching on everything from lolspeak and punctuation to emoji and meme culture. Still in its infancy, the digital age will continue to bring technological advancements and, thus, new ways of communicating. McCulloch’s writing is cheeky, sharp, and insightful. She writes in direct communication with her reader and encourages them to continue with their own internet language investigation. After all, as she points out, this book is meant to be an open conversation on internet language and inspire continuing research. The internet and language are not static, and neither is the author’s message.
Extra credit: Check out McCulloch’s blog All Things Linguistic and her podcast Lingthusiasm with cohost Lauren Gawne.
3. “Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global”
Author ✍️ Laura Spinney | science journalist, nonfiction writer, novelist
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Published 📢 2025, Bloomsbury Publishing
Genre 📚 Nonfiction
Topic 📌 Historical linguistics, the Proto-Indo-European family tree (aka PIE 🥧)
You should read this if…you’re looking for an interdisciplinary discussion on language change.
You might have heard of proto languages before, like proto-Germanic, but what the heck are they? Simply put, they’re models of what we think older languages sounded like, languages that were spoken before written records existed. Spinney uses linguistics, archaeology, and genetics to triangulate the origin of the eurasian mother tongue Proto-Indo-European — call her “Mother” 💅— and its spread across continents. This is not an explanation of language change that solely focuses on linguistic mechanisms. It’s a broader explanation of how the indo-european languages have changed over millennia. The book is divided into chapters that focus on a branch (or related branches) of the Indo-European family tree: Anatolian, Tocharian, Celtic, Germanic, Italic, Indo-Iranian, Baltic, Slavic, Albanian, Armenian, Greek. Spinney weaves a tale about PIE that intersperses hard evidence with sensory detail, making you feel immersed in the investigation. She illustrates how languages are always changing — even now.
Easy peasy extra credit: If you enjoyed this book, I recommend watching “The Frozen Tomb of Mongolia” (2013, directed by Cédric Robion). It’s a documentary on the ancient Scythians; their homeland, the Altai Mountains; and their kurgan burial traditions — all cultural and geographic puzzle pieces that Spinney talks about in her book. As of right now, you can stream it on Tubi, Plex, and Amazon Prime Video.
4. “Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern”
Author ✍️ Jing Tsu | cultural historian, literary scholar, professor
Published 📢 2022, Penguin Random House
Genre 📚 Nonfiction
Topic 📌 Sinophone history, more specifically, its writing systems
You should read this if…you want a historical deep dive on the development of written language systems and are interested in sociopolitical influences on language.
Central to the understanding of linguistics is the inextricable relationship between language and power. Tsu tells a story of how the Chinese writing system confronted feudalism, mass literacy needs, empiricism, and gatekeeping. She paints a narrative of the human characters who shaped its written characters through a series of revolutions from the 19th to 21st centuries. The major thread running through this book is a string of “-izations”: phoneticization, alphabetization, romanization, latinization, characterization, standardization, industrialization, nationalization, foreignization, internationalization, westernization, politicization, democratization, mechanization, technologization, computerization, digitization, mobilization, modernization, informaticization, globalization, commercialization, economization — all of which have played a part in the story of sinicization. A nugget from the end of the book: “An adage, recalled by Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich, goes, ‘A language is a dialect with an army and navy.’ The idea is that the way any language becomes dominant has less to do with linguistic attributes than the politics that drive it.”
Parallel reading: I recommend pairing this book with the next one in this list: “Babel” by R.F. Kuang. Both books focus on the language–power relationship. In her Acknowledgements, Kuang also thanks her professor, Jing Tsu, “for shaping my thinking about coloniality, post-coloniality, and the bearing of language on power.”
5. “Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution”
Author ✍️ R.F. Kuang | translator, novelist
Published 📢 2022, HarperCollins Publishers
Genre 📚 Fiction (more specifically…Dark Academia, Historical Fantasy, Speculative Fiction)
Topic 📌 Language and power
You should read this if…you’re looking for a work of fiction that incorporates accurate, realistic aspects of linguistics.
In Victorian England, four Oxford students face the brutal reality of the colonial system that their translation studies perpetuate. It centers around the “silver industrial revolution,” an enchanted spin on the historical industrial revolution, and has uncanny similarities to our current-day AI revolution. Just like in this fictional universe, language in the real world is inextricably linked to hegemonic systems. Kuang incorporates the gamut of language topics — pidgins, grammar, phonology, etymology, semantics, metaphor, language reconstruction, language change, dialectology, word play, cultural competence — making it a story that only someone with a deep understanding of linguistics would be able to produce. It’s linguistics meets translation meets historical fiction meets magical realism.
Parallel reading: (In case you skipped book rec #4 in this list) I recommend pairing this book with “Kingdom of Characters” by Jing Tsu. Both books focus on the language–power relationship. In her Acknowledgements, Kuang also thanks her professor, Jing Tsu, “for shaping my thinking about coloniality, post-coloniality, and the bearing of language on power.”
