The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language
By Christine Kenneally
Viking $26.95, 368 pages

The earliest of our endless speculations about the origins of language comes from the Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus. He believed an innate ur-language to be the source of all languages. So he had two babies isolated in a hut with a shepherd who was forbidden to speak. Eventually, the children uttered the Phrygian word for bread. Centuries later, in similar experiments by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and King James IV of Scotland, the children respectively died without speaking and apparently burst into Hebrew.