The Story of English; How an Obscure Dialect Became the World's Most-Spoken Language

by Unknown

• ISBN13: 9781843178835
• ISBN10: 1843178834
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2013-04-01
• Publisher: Michael O'Mara

Summary

The fascinating story of how the English language has developed over the last 15 centuries Illustrating the compelling history of 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, this history also explores how that language evolved during the last two millennia. Chronologically ordered and divided into six main sections covering pre-Roman and Latin influences, the ascent of Old English, and the succession of Middle English, Early Modern, and then Late Modern English to today's global language, this fascinating book also explores such factors as the history of the printing press, the works of Chaucer, the evolution of The American Dictionary of the English Languagecommonly known as Webster'sand the magisterial Oxford English Dictionary, to the use of slang in today's speech and the coming of electronic messaging: language for a postmodern world.This is the perfect gift for any lover not just of English, but of the history and development of language.

Author Biography

Joseph Piercy is the author of Are You Turning Into Your Dad? and Slippery Tipples: A Guide to Weird and Wonderful Spirits & Liqueurs.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 11
The Celts and the Romans (40 BC to AD 450)	p. 15
Continental Celtic versus Insular Celtic	p. 16
The Ogham Alphabet	p. 19
The Roman Invasion	p. 21
The Rise of Old English (AD 450 to 1066)	p. 25
Angles, Saxons and Jutes	p. 26
Anglo-Saxons	p. 27
The Runic Alphabet	p. 28
Old English and Christianity	p. 28
The Old English Alphabet	p. 31
The Lindisfarne Gospels	p. 32
Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People	p. 35
Viking Marauders: The Influence of Old Norse	p. 35
Alfred the Great	p. 39
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle	p. 42
The Riddles of the Exeter Book	p. 43
Beowulf	p. 48
Middle English: Geoffrey Chaucer and All that (1066 to 1475)	p. 53
A Language United?	p. 54
The Domesday Book	p. 56
Norman French: The Language of Class and Culture	p. 59
The Middle-English Creole Hypothesis	p. 61
The Ormulum	p. 63
Wycliffe's Bible	p. 65
Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales	p. 68
The Decline of French	p. 74
Chancery Standard	p. 76
The Great Vowel Shift	p. 78
Early Modern English: A Leviathan of Language (1475 To 1670)	p. 81
William Caxton and the Printing Press	p. 83
Le Morte d'Arthur	p. 87
William TyndaleÆs Bible Translations	p. 91
Punctuation, Pronouns and Standardized Spelling	p. 97
Tottel's Miscellany	p. 100
The Inkhorn Debate	p. 103
The Campaign for Plain English?	p. 106
The Bard and the Renaissance Theatre	p. 107
'False Friends' and Faux Pas	p. 114
Sir Francis Bacon	p. 117
The King James Bible	p. 120
Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan	p. 127
John Milton and Paradise Lost	p. 131
Late Modern English: Towards a Global Language (1670 To 1900)	p. 137
Alexander Pope	p. 140
Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language	p. 144
The Hammer Blows of Grammar	p. 149
The Language of Industry	p. 154
American English and Webster's Dictionary	p. 156
The Ultimate Worde Horde: The Story of The Oxford English Dictionary	p. 160
The Language of Empire	p. 164
Post-Modern English	p. 167
Slang and Euphemisms	p. 169
BBC English versus Estuary English	p. 173
Singlish and Spanglish	p. 176
Digital English	p. 181
Select Bibliography	p. 185
Index	p. 187
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