Here is the riveting story of the English language, from its humble beginnings as a regional dialect to its current preeminence as the one global language, spoken by more than two billion people worldwide. In this groundbreaking book, Melvyn Bragg shows how English conquered the world. It is a magnificent adventure, full of jealousy, intrigue, and war—against a hoard of invaders, all armed with … with their own conquering languages, which bit by bit, the speakers of English absorbed and made their own.
Along the way, its colorful story takes in 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. The Adventure of English is an enthralling story not only of power, religion, and trade, but also of a people and how they changed the world.
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Generally a good summary of the evolution of English. The snippets of Old English and Middle English particularly interesting. Word lists can get a bit tedious at times but can be scanned easily.
Some of the best dictionaries show the ways that words change their meanings, their pronunciation, and come into, and go out of style. Linguistics shows how people shade pronunciation of words, into accents, sometimes developing new languages. This, however, is a biography of a language, showing how this living thing, English, developed from its …
I just finished the book, and it turned out to be a very good history of how we came to speak this language and why it became so different from other languages. New influences came in, but they had a tough time pushing out old usages. The author covers a long history of invasion in Britain before branching out to chapters on American, Indian, …
The book is organized by continents to describe the origination, spread, and dominance of the English language. It is utterly fascinating, i.e. (spoiler) when English speakers arrived in Australia they communicated by charades that they want to know the name of the kanagroo. The native speakers finally figured out what they wanted and replied …
It is not only for the language student but those interested in history and social issues. This is a book for all types of people curious as to how English was reformed and how the reformation of a unifying language has been passed to the world when other old languages languish in the past. It has ramifications into many other aspects of society …
Very interesting read about the history of the language and how it accreted so many words and ideas.
The book was well-written.
I loved it ,,,, What an insight into the development of the English language…. Read it!!!
I’m always telling people to read this book! It was so much fun!
I thought it was slow, and read only half waiting for something to happen
Very boring. I would not recommend!
Good, overall. I would prefer a bit more philology.
It is interesting that historians can now follow items such as Cod, Salt, and a language to create entertaining historical works. Their works make anything open for historical tracing. It also means anything can be a subject of inquiry and of interest.
* Well researched
* Well written
* Informative
* Entertaining
It has solid information, occasional humor, and makes our native language
interesting and enjoyable Melvyn Bragg is a good writer and I recommend
this book. I like history—and he makes the historical part of our language so
interesting.
This is an enlightening but not easy-to-read book – especially the long quotes from early forms of what became English. It puts the language in context of British and then world history. I found “The Mother Tongue” by Bill Bryson easier to read and just as interesting. Still, reading this is a worthwhile effort.
Very good, hard to put down
I love learning interesting facts about something I use every day, the English language
The book , while informative, is stiffly written and patchy. I like the idea of following words through their audible changes, and will finish reading it just out of curiosity .
Melvyn Bragg sets out to trace the origins, history, and evolution of the English language in The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language. He achieves his aims admirably, beginning with the invasion of the British isles by the tribes of Anglos and Saxons whose Germanic-rooted dialect has evolved into the English we know today.
Bragg …