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. 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).

A VILLAGE AND ITS PEOPLE THROUGH THE WHOLE OF ENGLISH HISTORY The village of Kibworth in Leicestershire lies at the very centre of England. It has a church, some pubs, the Grand Union Canal, a First World War Memorial - and many centuries of recorded history. Bought in the thirteenth century by William de Merton, who founded Merton College, Oxford, it also lodges 750 years of village history. Michael Wood tells the extraordinary story of one English community over fifteen centuries - from the moment that the Roman Emperor Honorius sent his famous letter in 410 advising the English to look to their own defences to the village as it is today. He builds on this unique archive, enlisting the help of Kibworth's inhabitants in a village-wide archaeological dig and the first complete DNA profile of an English village. The story of Kibworth is the story of England itself, a Who Do You Think You Are? for the entire nation. 'Better than any historian for decades, Wood brings home not just the ways in which buildings, landscapes and written texts may be read, but the sensual beauty of encounters with them' TLS

Born as a Germanic tongue with the arrival in Britain of the Anglo-Saxons in the early medieval period, heavily influenced by Norman French from the 11th century, and finally emerging as modern English from the late Middle Ages, the English language has grown to become the linguistic equivalent of a superpower, and is now sometimes described as the world's lingua franca. Worldwide, some 380 million people speak English as a first language and some 600 million as a second language. A staggering one billion people are believed to be learning it. English is the premier international language in communications, science, business, aviation, entertainment, and diplomacy and also on the Internet. It has been one of the official languages of the United Nations since its founding in 1945. It is considered by many good judges to be well on the way to becoming the world's first universal language Author Philip Gooden tells the story of the English language in all its richness and variety. From the intriguing origins and changing definitions of common words such as OK, berserk, curfew, cabal, and pow-wow, to the massive transformations wrought in the vocabulary and structure of the language by Anglo-Saxon and Norman conquest, through to the literary triumphs of Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales and the works of Shakespeare. The Story of English is a fascinating tale of linguistic, social and cultural transformation, and one that is accessibly and authoritatively told by an author in perfect command of his material.

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Discover how the relatively obscure dialects spoken by tribes from what are now Denmark, the Low Countries and northern Germany, became the most widely spoken language in the world.

With globalization, English has become an economic necessity and Indians have realized that they have the 'English advantage' over many other countries like China and Japan. India has shed its colonial complexes towards English and has come to terms with the language; Indians have separated the English language from the English. The Story of English in India presents historical facts in a socio-cultural framework. The book is a must for all teachers and students of English; it will be useful for all those interested in the politics of language and education in India. Key issues discussed: - Are we indebted to the British for introducing English in India? - What was the role of English during India's struggle for freedom? - Has English united India? - Has English divided India into two - the English knowing classes who govern and the non-English knowing masses who are governed? - Will English ever become an Indian tongue spoken in the great Indian language bazaar? - What will be the future of major Indian languages in the wake of the English onslaught? Will it end in linguistic imperialism and cultural colonialism?