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Library Journal: A tie-in for a nine-part television series to be broadcast over PBS beginning in September, this is a wide-ranging account of the travels and changes of the English tongue from its beginnings to tomorrow, from England to America to Australia to Africa and India and the Pacific. Despite an occasionally perceptible British bias, the authors have tried hard to paint a colorful, vivid picture of the many faces and varieties of English. The text is never dull, but is enlivened by innumerable examples and by interviews with representative individuals: a minister in Scotland, a couple from the Appalachians, a storekeeper in Newfoundland, a Philadelphia shoeshine man, a cockney fruitseller, an Australian farm family, the president of Sierra Leone, a writing professor in India. A readable book that all public libraries should have. BOMC alternate. Catherine V. von Schon, SUNY, Stony Brook.… (more)
User reviews
Chapter One of the first edition describes the 'current' state of English in the world, now a thirty-year-old snapshot. This is the chapter that was most in need of updating as it predates the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, etc. It amounts to a pep rally and contains some hubris: the argument that "my language gobbled up and absorbed elements of yours, while yours is infected with influence from mine" is entirely circular and a game of adjectives. It was interesting however to read about the use of English outside of traditionally English-speaking countries, and the context of that use.
Chapter Two is a very good overview of the successive waves of early influence on development of the language: Celts, Anglo Saxons, Christianity, Vikings and the French Normans. Essentially serves as an early history of England. Chaucer is introduced as the first major artist of Middle English after it evolved from Old English. I learned some interesting facts about common surname origins.
Chapter Three puts focus on the Elizabethan age, a golden age for English as it featured Shakespeare and the first English settlements in America. American English received a lot of early influence from other languages: French, native American, and especially Spanish.
Chapter Four corrected my naive misconception that Scots was its own language rather than a dialect. Tucked into this chapter is the story of the first English dictionaries. There's interesting contrast between Scots voluntarily giving way to standard English and what happened in the prior chapter, when English refused to give way to Norman French.
Chapter Five was the Irish story, a sadder one where the native language Irish Gaelic was overcome by English, and not because the Irish wished for it. The good news was that Irish brought much positive influence to English and this melding provided for heralded writers such as Keats and Joyce. Interesting to read about Newfoundland being a lasting haven for Irish Gaelic; I'd known their speech was unique in Canada but not made this connection.
Chapter Six addresses the influence of African languages on English, via pidgin/creole tongues. It follows the thesis that black English influenced white culture, but presents this as controversial in the American south. It was accomplished in large part through music. What I can't get past is the horrible choice of frontispiece - where it should be Frederick Douglas, James Baldwin, or some other heralded writer as was done for previous chapters and those to come, in the first edition we get the propagation of a racist caricature.
Chapter Seven taught me that Noah Webster is largely to blame for the nuisance differences in British/American English. There's an interesting section on Canadian English I didn't entirely agree with, or perhaps it's just that old. The California gold rush lent itself to the surprising uniformity to American English during that country's rapid westward expansion.
Chapter Eight explores the cockney speech of east London, England and how this may have contributed to the modern English spoken in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Chapter Nine is a study of what new languages might possibly be born from English and how this could happen, taking examples from Jamaica, Sierra Leone, India and Singapore.
The epilogue is a nice wrap-up, highlighting modern journalists who continue to decry the manipulation and mutation of the language as they lay claim to some pure standard, in contrast with the book's thesis that language must evolve if it is to survive and no single clear standard for English really exists or can be objectively ranked superior. If I come across a later edition I think I would like to read this portion to see what different summation it makes in light of the electronic communications revolution, during which the medium has evolved even faster than the message.
Because languages are always in a state of flux, especially English, the book has become dated. Since being published in
However, I would still recommend this book to anyone who appreciates the finer points of this language and who are interested where many of the words we use today came from.
--J.