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Product Description
Book Description
An eye-opening tour of the English language through the ages from Britain's leading linguistics expert
Product Description
In this unique new history of the world's most ubiquitous language, linguistics expert David Crystal draws on words that best illustrate the huge variety of sources, influences and events that have helped to shape our vernacular since the first definitively English word was written down in the fifth century ('roe', in case you are wondering). Featuring Latinate and Celtic words, weasel words and nonce-words, ancient words ('loaf') to cutting edge ('twittersphere') and spanning the indispensable words that shape our tongue ('and', 'what') to the more fanciful ('fopdoodle'), Crystal takes us along the winding byways of language via the rude, the obscure and the downright surprising.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I completely disagree with the above reader. David Crystal has brilliantly used the device of discussing individual words (from and to twittersphere) and used them to highlight many, often unknown, facets of the English language. For example, did you know that people were using the 'greengrocer's apostrophe' for words like 'potato's' since the seventeenth century? Personally, I couldn't put this book down, I found it accessible, readable and entertaining.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Inspired by a recent radio series on "The History of the World in One Hundred Objects , David Crystal has selected one hundred words, ranging widely over time and place to reflect the diversity of English. He readily concedes the arbitrary nature of his choice, and that everyone would choose a different hundred.
Entertaining as ever, Crystal's choice of words begins with "roe", one of the first words to be written down in Old English on the bone of a deer, and ends with "twittersphere", topical when the book went to print, but already superseded by more recent creations. You actually get more than 100 words, since he uses one to spark off a host of related ones. "Sudoku" is a cue for the Japanese words which have entered our language, such as "bonsai"; "Americanism" is a chance to compare different terms for the same thing on opposite sides of the Atlantic; "gaggle" is a collective noun prompting others, such as the intriguing "wisp of snipe"- Crystal suggests such words are the result of a group of medieval monks' parlour game on a cold evening.
He devotes separate chapters to basic words like "and" or "what", to those which have changed meaning like "wicked", to words coined by Shakespeare like "undeaf", lost words like "fopdoodle", those which are right or wrong according to the age like "ain't", "portmanteau" words like "brunch", taboo words and so on.
Crystal is no cultural snob, accepting "Jamaican English" on a par with the original, noting that the inhabitants of the British Isles form only a fraction of English speakers round the world. Similarly, he welcomes the dynamic nature of the language, accepting the inevitable demise of regional dialects along with the rise of "Essex speak" or "Hindi Cockney".
This book could make a good Christmas present, or enlighten younger readers whom Crystal suggests tend to have a smaller vocabulary simply through having lived a shorter time. However, I found the approach a bit too flibbertigibbetish - Crystal might approve this new adjective culled from a Middle English world, and the book will prove far too popular for him to mind my criticism that it is somewhat lightweight. I would have preferred it if he had concentrated on a more solid theme, such as the influence of foreign words on the English language.
Entertaining as ever, Crystal's choice of words begins with "roe", one of the first words to be written down in Old English on the bone of a deer, and ends with "twittersphere", topical when the book went to print, but already superseded by more recent creations. You actually get more than 100 words, since he uses one to spark off a host of related ones. "Sudoku" is a cue for the Japanese words which have entered our language, such as "bonsai"; "Americanism" is a chance to compare different terms for the same thing on opposite sides of the Atlantic; "gaggle" is a collective noun prompting others, such as the intriguing "wisp of snipe"- Crystal suggests such words are the result of a group of medieval monks' parlour game on a cold evening.
He devotes separate chapters to basic words like "and" or "what", to those which have changed meaning like "wicked", to words coined by Shakespeare like "undeaf", lost words like "fopdoodle", those which are right or wrong according to the age like "ain't", "portmanteau" words like "brunch", taboo words and so on.
Crystal is no cultural snob, accepting "Jamaican English" on a par with the original, noting that the inhabitants of the British Isles form only a fraction of English speakers round the world. Similarly, he welcomes the dynamic nature of the language, accepting the inevitable demise of regional dialects along with the rise of "Essex speak" or "Hindi Cockney".
This book could make a good Christmas present, or enlighten younger readers whom Crystal suggests tend to have a smaller vocabulary simply through having lived a shorter time. However, I found the approach a bit too flibbertigibbetish - Crystal might approve this new adjective culled from a Middle English world, and the book will prove far too popular for him to mind my criticism that it is somewhat lightweight. I would have preferred it if he had concentrated on a more solid theme, such as the influence of foreign words on the English language.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Like the two volumes of Foyle's Philavery which I have reviewed on Amazon earlier, this volume, by an author who has written twelve other books about the English language, makes another pleasant and entertaining gift for logophiles. Here, too, you come across some words (bone-house, bodgery, dragsman, mipela, doobry, bagonize, chillax), though nothing like as many as in the Philavery volumes - but then the purpose of this book is different: it is to show when familiar words first appeared, how in some cases the spelling has changed, how words have evolved over the years and how new words - some ephemeral, some enduring - are constantly being coined. It may not be all that interesting to discover when a word was first used, and again only a few of those evolutions - like how "glamour" evolved from "grammar" or what "lunch" originally meant - are surprising. Crystal has collected many modern coinages - acronyms, abbreviations, slang - some of which are familiar (especially those deriving from the internet), while others will not be - Obamabots, for example: people who robot-like support Barack Obama, for instance. There are also several references to regional words, used only in parts of the United Kingdom. He also has passages on American English, Australian English, pidgin English etc.
Although there are 100 sections, each with one word as its title, in fact Crystal uses many of them as triggers to talk about a great many other words. So, to give just one example, in the article headed "lakh" we also have references to "godown", "bungalow", "dungaree", "guru" and no fewer than 50 other words which English has borrowed from Indian or Arabic, or which Indian English has invented. So there is a lot of information in this book, and Crystal's enthusiasm, breadth of knowledge, and ruminations about language are very engaging.
Although there are 100 sections, each with one word as its title, in fact Crystal uses many of them as triggers to talk about a great many other words. So, to give just one example, in the article headed "lakh" we also have references to "godown", "bungalow", "dungaree", "guru" and no fewer than 50 other words which English has borrowed from Indian or Arabic, or which Indian English has invented. So there is a lot of information in this book, and Crystal's enthusiasm, breadth of knowledge, and ruminations about language are very engaging.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Not a comment on the content itself, BUT...
I have not yet finished this book, which looks to be a promising read, but I feel compelled to comment on one thing: THE MARGINS. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Pedant
The Story of English in 100 Words
I am a great fan of David Crystal and always find him a joy to read and this book only advances my regard for this very "readable" linguist.
I have just purchased Begat. Read more
I have just purchased Begat. Read more
Published 5 months ago by chippy
Linguistics can be fun!
This is a fascinating book for anybody interested in the English language. It illustrates in an amusing yet scholarly way how our language has developed over time. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Mr. P. J. Downes
Inspiring
Crystal is as usual extremely informative without ever being pedantic. His approach to the history of English is original and humorous, so this book is (like all his other ones)... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Claudia Cantaluppi
English made interesting
David Crystal could have written about a different 100 words - and the result would have been as interesting.
He is as clear as his name suggests
He is as clear as his name suggests
Published 6 months ago by Shurdy
A delightful word-journey x 100
What a delightful little book, and how the one `negative' reviewer came to the conclusion that this book was somehow hard going, or that Crystal was `showing off' just beggars... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Miseri57
Not impressed
The idea seemed good, and the price was right, but overall I didn't really enjoy the book. David is at the top of any list of linguists, but he should try putting himself in the... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Peter J. H. Sharman
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