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Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language Publisher: Columbia University Press Number Of Pages: 320 Publication Date: 2007-03-16 Sales Rank: 37307 ISBN / ASIN: 023113794X EAN: 9780231137942 Binding: Hardcover Manufacturer: Columbia University Press Studio: Columbia University Press Average Rating: 3 Why is there such a striking difference between English spelling and English pronunciation? How did our seemingly relatively simple grammar rules develop? What are the origins of regional dialect, literary language, and everyday speech, and what do they have to do with you? Seth Lerer's Inventing English is a masterful, engaging history of the English language from the age of Beowulf to the rap of Eminem. Many have written about the evolution of our grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary, but only Lerer situates these developments in the larger history of English, America, and literature. Lerer begins in the seventh century with the poet Caedmon learning to sing what would become the earliest poem in English. He then looks at the medieval scribes and poets who gave shape to Middle English. He finds the traces of the Great Vowel Shift in the spelling choices of letter writers of the fifteenth century and explores the achievements of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of 1755 and The Oxford English Dictionary of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He describes the differences between English and American usage and, through the example of Mark Twain, the link between regional dialect and race, class, and gender. Finally, he muses on the ways in which contact with foreign languages, popular culture, advertising, the Internet, and e-mail continue to shape English for future generations. Each concise chapter illuminates a moment of invention-a time when people discovered a new form of expression or changed the way they spoke or wrote. In conclusion, Lerer wonders whether globalization and technology have turned English into a world language and reflects on what has been preserved and what has been lost. A unique blend of historical and personal narrative, Inventing English is the surprising tale of a language that is as dynamic as the people to whom it belongs. Review: Engrossing Book I found this book one of the best of its type. It gives a logical and understandable survey of the development of the English language from its earliest days -- the most interesting and illustrative part of the book -- to contemporary times. The first few chapters are particularly enjoyable though merit a second reading, not because of the presentation, but because of the complexity of the subject. Review: No page-turner Others have covered the content and scope of this book sufficiently, so I wish only to echo those who found Lerer's writing dense and remarkably wooden. Readers may find it useful as a reference work, as something they can dip into here and there. But it is certainly no page-turner. For an educator who has much experience explicating arcane subjects for the lay person, Lerer is surprisingly dull, dull, dull! Review: Shaping Something Beautiful I ordered INVENTING ENGLISH the minute I read the reviews and was not disappointed. In fact, it exceeded my expectations. Lerer, a Stanford professor who has produced audio lectures on the English language as well as a considerable backlog of scholarship, has created a highly readable book that goes back to the very origins of the language--its sounds, rhythms, organization, meanings and looks--in post-Roman Britain and then follows its very organic, human trail forward from Old English to Middle English to the modern language that leaped an ocean, spread across the New World and is still evolving. Lerer has great passion for his topic and a gift for delivering information. While there is considerable technical content, it is incorporated effortlessly and backed up with a glossary and appendices. Citations from Old and Middle English literature are followed immediately by translations. With less than 300 pages, Lerer has to leap from lily pad to lily pad in time to show how the language grew with expanding human experience and was influenced by historical acts, but he seems to hit all the key moments: Caedmon in the 7th century wrapping his consonant-dense bluntish language around Christian concepts; chroniclers documenting daily lives and events; King Alfred organizing a nation state; the Norman Conquest introducing French and a language of court apart from a language of the countryside; Chaucer seizing on the internationalism of King Richard's reign; the Great Vowel Shift; Shakespeare inventing our modern language; orthographers attempting to corral it; American colonists consciously shaping it their way; and those who have continued to use it to interpret experience and communicate life, influenced by technology, warfare, politics and globalization. There is something beautiful in a language where at the very beginning on a cold, rough shore, users were calling the ocean the "swan-road" and the "whale-road" and the word for poet was the word that became today's "shaper." It is amazing to see that even in times when human endeavor has been at its most self-destructive, the language has been able to flower and step forward. http://rapidshare.com/files/57272620/Inventing_English_A_Portable_History_of_the_Language-023113794X.rar or http://mihd.net/1xpsul [ Last edited by jackiemwd on 2007-9-22 at 22:29 ] |
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