About The Secret Life of Equations: "Photographs, illustrations, and other visuals help maintain reader interest. There are also a number of cross-references that allow readers to move quickly between related ideas. This highly recommended book closes with a short, but complete, index." -- American Reference Books Annual Like its companion titles, The Secret Life of Language uses quirky illustrations, helpful diagrams and clear text to unlock the fascinating workings behind the development of the world's languages. Readers will gain insight into the extraordinary underlying stories and facts about the language (or languages) they speak, as well as those that they perhaps would like to learn. Six chapters cover all of the world's language groups from their historic origins to today as well as the physical mechanics of speech. * The anatomy of speech -- The history of communication; Evolution of the power of speech * What makes up a language -- Articulation; Phonetics revisited; Phonology; Morphology; Syntax; Lexicon * Language families -- The Indo-European family; Other language families and proto-languages; The Romance languages as daughters of Latin; The Celtic languages; The Slavonic languages; The Semitic family; The Turkic languages; Languages in the Caucasus; The African languages; The languages of Polynesia; Languages of the Americas; Languages of South Asia; Chinese; Japanese * Writing systems -- Includes the origins of writing; Cuneiform and hieroglyphs;