The Stories of EnglishHarry N. Abrams, 2004 M09 9 - 608 pages The Stories of English is a groundbreaking history of the language by David Crystal, the world-renowned writer and commentator on English. Other books have been written on the subject, but they focused on the educated, printed language called standard English. Crystal turns the history of the language on its head and provides a startlingly original view of where the richness, creativity, and diversity of the language truly lies--in the accents and dialects of nonstandard English users all over the globe. Interwoven within this central chronological story are accounts of uses of dialect around the world as well as in literary classics from The Canterbury Tales to The Lord of the Rings. For the first time, regional speech and writing is placed center stage. This significant shift in perspective enables the reader to understand the importance of everyday, previously marginalized, voices in our language, and provides an argument for the way English should be taught in the future. |
Contents
List of Illustrations | 1 |
The origins of Old English | 15 |
The Celtic language puzzle | 29 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
accent Ælfric American Anglo-Saxon Anglo-Saxon Chronicle appear arrived authors become began Bible Britain British British English Celtic Chapter character Chaucer Chronicle common Danelaw dialect Dictionary distinctive domains Early Modern English East Midlands emerged England English language especially example expression forms French Germanic glottal stop grammar influence Interlude John kind King large number later Latin letters lexemes lexical linguistic literary literature loanwords London manuscripts meaning Mercian Middle English Middle English period nonstandard English Norman norms northern noun Old English Old Norse origin panel phrases political pronounced pronunciation Received Pronunciation recorded reflect regional dialect Scandinavian Scotland Scottish scribes seen sense sentence Shakespeare sixteenth century social sociolinguistic sound southern speak speakers speech spelling spoken Standard English standard language story style stylistic texts thou translation usage variation variety verb vocabulary vowel West Saxon writing written þat