The stories of English
The Stories of English is a 2004 book by British linguist David Crystal; it traces the history of the English language from the invasion of Great Britain by the Angles and Saxons in the 5th Century to the modern splintering of the language into its modern British, American, Indian, Australian, and other dialects.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
2mentions
2people
2010–2024years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I recommend three really good books:
[1] The Stories of English by David Crystal http://www.amazon.com/Stories-English-David-Crystal/dp/15856...
[2] The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-Bill-Bryson/dp/B001W6RRF...
[3] The Story of English by McCrum, Cran, and MacNeil http://www.amazon.com/Story-English-Third-Revised/dp/0142002...
All of these make a delightful read, I especially like [2].
A number of factors combined to make English orthography as unique as it is. First, there was no central authority of the English language for about three centuries, after the Norman invasion. Then, as French usage receded and English words were becoming more frequent people adopted the spelling of one part of the country and the pronunciation of another, e.g. Western England spellings for "busy" and "bury", but London pronunciation of "bizzy" and Kentish pronunciation of "berry" [2, p, 124] On top of that, the Great Vowel Shift happened.
OK, back to the printers. The problem was that English spelling started to become fixated due to printing, around 1650s, just when the language was undergoing a huge change. William Caxton, who may be considered the first English editor, published the oldest English book in Bruges, in 1475. By 1640, it is estimated that there were more than 20,000 titles available in Britain.
The final touch came from prescriptive orthographers who fiddled with word spellings to make them "right" according to classical languages, in the seventeenth century. Thus we have the b in "debt", the s in "island", h in "anchor" etc.
English is an interesting language indeed.
- "The Year 1000" by Lacey and Danziger explains this well in slightly more detail, with some references, for anyone that would like to learn more. The other reference I have on the shelf that I will check for this is David Crystal's "The Stories of English". Any other good references out there?
Related
The Story of English
2 recommend · 2
The world's writing systems
2 recommend · 8
The Mother Tongue
12 recommend · 22
The Cambridge encyclopedia of language
1 recommend · 3
Politics and the English language
112 recommend · 263
The Adventure of English
4 recommend · 4
