Customer Reviews

Blooming English: Observations on the Roots, Cultivation and Hybrids of the English Language

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I had the pleasure of hearing Kate present many of her radio segments, which were always filled with intriguing snippets about the English language. Now she has made this information available to a wider public. Her writing style is very easy-going, and each chapter in the book can be dipped into individually. There were so many fascinating parts that it would be hard to single out my favourite, although the range of language used in St Valentine's Day messages was eye-opening and hilarious, and the way letters appear and disappear through the centuries was fascinating. I was taught very correct grammar and it was very interesting to discover that many of these "golden rules" have no basis for their adoption and in fact in some cases are totally wrong.
A delightful book from beginning to end.

Burridge writes about linguistically interesting phenomena, but in a style that a layman reader can grasp without much difficulty. She packs each page with copius examples that run the gamut of our fascinating English language. As a linguistics instructor, I intend to hang on to this one for the clarity of its style and substance of content. As an American English speaker I also find her Australianisms very interesting!

Not without its pleasures (once upon a time we could be kempt, corrigible, ert and wieldy, and full of ruth and list - and the singular of quince, chintz and bodice was quin, chint and body!) If Richard Lederer's your wacky, over-the-toppo uncle (and he is, he is) she's a companionable, and formidably erudite, auntie - but maybe one for the 'loobry' (as she puts it on p18), not the study.

As a sample of the erudition carelessly on display (p80) coney used to be pronunced like honey (or indeed bunny) - it changed when the word (spelt cunny) became a synonym for a female body part with an uncomfortable proximity to another such term. Cunny Island, anyone? It's time we brought cock back instead of rooster, too - a fine upstanding vocable. Then there's the archaic word for fart on p50 that I can't find anywhere else (is it April 1?) and a French dialect term stuck improbably midway between gallus (cock) and cattus (cat) and meaning either, but she doesn't tell us what it is! (Is all this going to get past the firewall, I wonder?)