Why Languages Are So Different. Popular Linguistics

Human language is the greatest gift of nature! It gives us the ability to communicate, to convey our thoughts over distances. Thanks to language, we can read books written many centuries ago, which means we can use the knowledge accumulated by our ancestors and preserve our knowledge for future generations. Without language, there would be no humanity!
How many languages are there on Earth, how are they structured; how and by what laws do they change; why are some of them related while others are not; what exactly distinguishes the Russian language from English and other languages, and Chinese from Japanese; what are the moods and aspects for verbs, and cases for nouns
Modern linguistics answers these and other questions, in an engaging and popular manner, presented to the reader by the author of the book - Vladimir Alexandrovich Plungyan, a renowned linguist and corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.