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A review by ameyawarde
How Language Began: The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention by Daniel L. Everett
4.0
Tons of super interesting information in here, though I, an autistic, had to FF through his chapter on autism. His heart was in the right place, but he only called us "autism sufferers" (a million times), and conflated autism & savant syndrome and... it just, got uncomfortable.
Which is too bad because other parts of his book, where he didn't even mention autism, i found extremely relevant to some of the conversations we have about language difficulties in the autism community these days, such as the DRASTIC variation in language skills among us-- some with very "stereotypical" autistic difficulties (such as not understanding subtlety or metaphor or what is left unspoken, etc etc) while others are better at language than neurotypicals in every conceivable way, and are even prolific and lauded authors.
But recently online somewhere a fellow autistic brought up the question of what if some of the "autistic language difficulties" aren't from inherent neurological differences themselves (unlike other aspects of autism) but side effects from the reduced socialization many autistics get from being ostracized from peers and even adults? Most of my family and friends are autistic and the kids, moving closer to puberty now, have had less and less of those language issues as they've gotten older (and I do very explicitly teach them all the language things I recognize they don't pick up as automatically as NT kids).. Anyway they last bit of of this book talked quite a bit about that without mentioning autism, and I do want to get an ebook version (i listened to the audiobook) so I can pull some quotes and hunt down citations and stuff because it sounded like he made some good points.
tl;dr - some accidental but not hateful abelism, a lot of other reviewers who take issues with some of his points (tho he does do a better job at mentioning the points of those who disagrees with him than most authors, who don't do it at all), but overall I think it's a really good and thorough history of human language.
Which is too bad because other parts of his book, where he didn't even mention autism, i found extremely relevant to some of the conversations we have about language difficulties in the autism community these days, such as the DRASTIC variation in language skills among us-- some with very "stereotypical" autistic difficulties (such as not understanding subtlety or metaphor or what is left unspoken, etc etc) while others are better at language than neurotypicals in every conceivable way, and are even prolific and lauded authors.
But recently online somewhere a fellow autistic brought up the question of what if some of the "autistic language difficulties" aren't from inherent neurological differences themselves (unlike other aspects of autism) but side effects from the reduced socialization many autistics get from being ostracized from peers and even adults? Most of my family and friends are autistic and the kids, moving closer to puberty now, have had less and less of those language issues as they've gotten older (and I do very explicitly teach them all the language things I recognize they don't pick up as automatically as NT kids).. Anyway they last bit of of this book talked quite a bit about that without mentioning autism, and I do want to get an ebook version (i listened to the audiobook) so I can pull some quotes and hunt down citations and stuff because it sounded like he made some good points.
tl;dr - some accidental but not hateful abelism, a lot of other reviewers who take issues with some of his points (tho he does do a better job at mentioning the points of those who disagrees with him than most authors, who don't do it at all), but overall I think it's a really good and thorough history of human language.