A kind reader in Slovakia took advantage of the Amazon link in the margin to send me a copy of Language Myths, by Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill (thanks very much, Ján!). Someone recently asked me to recommend a few books that would give a basic idea of language as seen by linguists for the nonspecialist; as soon as I looked through this, I wrote him back and added it to the ones I’d already mentioned (Jim Quinn’s American Tongue and Cheek and Robert A. Hall, Jr.’s Linguistics and Your Language, a revised edition of Leave Your Language Alone!). The format is simple and brilliant: have a bunch of linguists take a bunch of popular myths about language and deconstruct them, explaining why linguists look at the issue differently and what the facts of the matter are. Some of the myths discussed are “the meanings of words should not be allowed to vary or change,” “some languages are just not good enough,” “women talk too much,” “some languages are harder than others,” “some languages have no grammar,” “double negatives are illogical,” and “Aborigines speak a primitive language.” Obviously some sections are better written than others, but anyone who reads the whole book will have not a grounding in linguistic science but something more important for the average citizen: a basic grasp of how linguists think about language, and an understanding of why the silly ideas that irritate linguists so much are silly. If enough people achieved that, conversations about language would be as coherent as those about (say) sports, and a whole generation of linguists could stop worrying about their blood pressure so much.