Summer Reading Lists
The members of the Linguistics Institute have put together a list of interesting books, movies, YouTube channels, and other resources for adding some (leisure) linguistics to your summer break!
The list is intended for any linguistics enthusiast, and no prior knowledge of any branch of linguistics is required.
Thanks to the University and State Library (ULB), many of the titles are already available at the library and the links are included in the list.
2026
- Research mate in African linguistics: focus on Cameroon a fieldworker's tool for deciphering the stories Cameroonian languages have to tell; in honor of Professor Larry N. Hyman
- Sprachmaschinen: Eine Philosophie der künstlichen Intelligenz by Roberto Simanowski
- A mind for language: an introduction to the innateness debate by Harry van der Hulst
- Wordslut by Amanda Montell
- The Art Language Invention by David J. Peterson
- Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang
- Science Fictions by Stuart J. Ritchie [scientific reading]
- Introducing Linguistics: A Graphic Guide by Bill Mayblin and Robert L. Trask
- Inventing languages: A practical introduction by Carolina González
- Algospeak: how social media is transforming the future of language by Adam Aleksic
- Friends with Words: Adventures in Languageland by Martha Barnette
- Der Urknall unserer Sprache by Laura Spinney
- Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages by Guy Deutscher
- Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch
- Breaking the Bias of English: How English Disempowers Women and How to Fix It in Only Six Words! by Vivian R. Probst
- About Machine Learning, LLMS and more: https://vinija.ai/
- A way with words: https://waywordradio.org/
- Large Language Model Visualization: https://bbycroft.net/llm
- An Introduction to the Vocal Organs – With MRI video: https://youtu.be/SVKR3ESdAk8?si=IQxvqZeN9to0NAu7
2025
- The Ingenious Language: Nine Epic Reasons to Love Greek by Andrea Marcolongo
- Signs of Civilisation: How punctuation changed history by Bård Borch Michalsen
- Atlas der vom Aussterben bedrohten Sprachen, von Arnfrid Schenk, Stefan Schnell
- The AI Con, by Emily Bender and Alex Hanna
- Thirty-Two Words for Field: Lost Words of the Irish Landscape by Manchan Magan
- Babel by R. F. Kuang
- Exercises in Style (Stilübungen) by Raymond Queneau
- The Kingdom of Speech by Tom Wolfe
- Research Mates in African Linguistics edited by Ngessimo M. Mutaka and Sammy B. Chumbow
- Arrival (2016)
- Fry's Planet Word (2011)
- The Grammar of Happiness (2012)
- The Linguists (2008)
- Is the man who is tall happy? (2013)
- My beautiful broken brain (2014)
- The King’s Speech (2010)
- Heinrich Heine in your mother tongue
- Levy, Kim, and Fox. 2025. The Science of Language in the Era of Generative AI
- The love of books (How a complete library was saved during the war in Sarajevo)
2024
- Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World (Irene Vallejo)
- The Dictionary of Lost Words (Pip Williams)
- Is that a Fish in your ear? Translation the Meaning of Everything (David Bellos)
- The Penguin Book of Oulipo (Edited by Philip Terry)
- Endangered Alphabets, an Essay on writing (Tim Brookes)
- Poems from the Edge of Extinction: The Beautiful New Treasury of Poetry in Endangered Languages, in Association with the National Poetry Library
- Just a Phrase I’m going Through, My life in language (David Crystal)
- The language instinct (Steven Pinker)
- Musicophilia (Oliver Sacks)
- Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes
- Through the Language Glass (Guy Deutscher)
available at ULB: https://katalog.ulb.hhu.de/Record/990023722890206443 and https://katalog.ulb.hhu.de/Record/990023885400206443 - The Unfolding of Language (Guy Deutscher)
- Language Myths (Laurie Bauer & Trudgill)
- Heterogenia Linguistico: An Introduction to Interspecies Linguistics (Seno Salt)
- The Linguistics Wars (Randy Allen Harris)
- The Semantics of Murder (Aifric Campbell)
- The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (John DeFrancis)
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: An edition printed in the International Phonetic Alphabet (Lewis Carroll, transcribed by Michael Everson)
- The Awful German Language (Mark Twain)
- Babel (Gaston Durren)
- Arrival
- Still Alice
- Hot Skull (Sicak kafa)
- My Fair Lady
For computational linguists: