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Melvyn Bragg

The Adventure of English

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“A captivating history” of the world’s second most widely spoken language, from ancient dialect to digital slang (The Daily Telegraph).
What role did the Black Death play in the development of the English language? Where did “the real McCoy” come from? Why is Singlish on the rise? In what ways in language evolving in the age of the internet? How and why did “kirc” become “church”? And what’s the difference between autumn and fall?
Here is the riveting history of the English language, from its humble beginnings (around 500 AD) as a regional dialect to its current preeminence as a truly global language, estimated to be spoken or understood by as many as two billion people worldwide. Along the way, its colorful story involves a host of remarkable people, places, and events: the Norman invasion of England in 1066; the arrival of The Canterbury Tales and a “coarse” playwright named William Shakespeare, who added 2,000 words to the language; the songs of slaves; the words of Davy Crockett; and the Lewis and Clark expedition, which led to hundreds of new words as the explorers discovered unknown flora and fauna.
In this “thorough and incredibly enjoyable trip down a linguistic memory lane” (Bloomsbury Review)—the basis of an eight-part History Channel documentary—Melvyn Bragg shows how English conquered the world. It is a magnificent adventure, full of jealousy, intrigue, and war—against a horde of invaders, all armed with their own conquering languages, which bit by bit, the speakers of English absorbed and made their own.
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470 printed pages
Publication year
2011
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  • Кирилл Милкусshared an impression2 years ago
    👍Worth reading

Quotes

  • Валя Дерксенhas quoted6 years ago
    Sanskrit is certainly one of the older attested members of the family of languages out of which come all the languages of Europe (save Basque, Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian) and many in Asia. Sanskrit was an inflected language which relied on changes at the ends of words (inflections) to indicate grammatical functions in nouns (through case and number) and verbs (through person, tense and mood)
  • ipathas quoted7 years ago
    The way in which a few tribal and local Germanic dialects spoken by a hundred fifty thousand people grew into the English language spoken and understood by about one and a half billion people has all the characteristics of a tremendous adventure
  • Anna Medvedevahas quoted7 years ago
    But English was too smart to be pinned down, even by the English

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