Features a survey of everything from how sounds become speech to how names work. This work also talks about eyebrow flashes, whistling languages, how parents teach their children to speak, how politeness travels across languages and how the way we talk show not just how old we are but where we're from and even who we want to be.
This superbly well-informed - and also wonderfully entertaining - history of the English language answers all these questions, showing how the many strands of English (Standard English, dialect and slang among them) developed to create the richly-varied language of today.
It's not what you say, it's the way that you say it ... There have long been debates about 'correct' pronunciation in the English language, and Britain's most distinguished linguistic expert, David Crystal, is here to set the record straight. Sounds Appealing tells us exactly why, and how, we pronounce words as we do. Pronunciation is integral to communication, and is tailored to meet the demands of the two main forces behind language: intelligibility and identity. Equipping his readers with knowledge of phonetics, linguistics and physiology - with examples ranging from Eliza Doolittle to Winston Churchill - David Crystal explores the origins of regional accents, how they are influenced by class and education, and how their peculiarities have changed over time.
Why is there an 'h' in ghost? William Caxton, inventor of the printing press and his Flemish employees are to blame: without a dictionary or style guide to hand in fifteenth century Bruges, the typesetters simply spelled it the way it sounded to their foreign cars, and it stuck. This book takes you on a journey through English spelling.
Contains over 28,000 entries on the facts, events, issues, people, beliefs and achievements that make up the sum of human knowledge and experience. This book is designed so that it is easy to locate the information you require quickly and there are over 350 maps and diagrams to aid understanding.
Offers an eye-opening tour of the English language through the ages. In this history of the world's ubiquitous language, this title draws on words that 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.
Why is there an 'h' in ghost? William Caxton, inventor of the printing press and his Flemish employees are to blame: without a dictionary or style guide to hand in fifteenth century Bruges, the typesetters simply spelled it the way it sounded to the foreign ears, and it stuck. This book unearths the stories behind the rogue words that confound us.
Né en 1921, fils d'un pasteur anglican, John Bradburne a longtemps cherché la voie qui était la sienne, ne la trouvant ni dans l'enseignement, ni dans l'armée, ni dans le mariage, bien qu'il y ait souvent pensé, ni dans les ordres, bien qu'il fait de nombreuses tentatives dans ce sens. En 1947 il devient catholique. Depuis 1956, disciple laïc de saint François, il entre en 1969, comme directeur et homme à tout faire, à la léproserie de Mtemwa, en Rhodésie du Sud, le futur Zimbabwe. En 1979, lors des conflits pour l'indépendance du pays, il est assassiné par un groupe de rebelles. Il laisse une oeuvre poétique immense, peut-être 200 000 vers.
On verra, dans le choix ici présenté, que, lyriques ou cocasses, inspirés ou plus terre-à-terre, savants ou naïfs, ces vers témoignent d'abord d'une immense tendresse pour la beauté de la vie.
A vital resource for scholars, students and actors, this book contains glosses and quotes for over 14,000 words that could be misunderstood by or are unknown to a modern audience. Displayed panels look at such areas of Shakespeare's language as greetings, swear-words and terms of address. Plot summaries are included for all Shakespeare's plays and on the facing page is a unique diagramatic representation of the relationships within each play.
