Customer Reviews

Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language (Oxford Paperback Reference)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

People who love English already have a few books about advanced English usage, such as Fowler, and various style guides. I love Fowler; browsing its pages is a delight. The Oxford Companion (concise ed) is different. It's much more objective, and more encylopedic. There are entries on many important linguistic terms and concepts, excellent definitions of all the grammatical terms you'll come across (what does "dative" mean?), accurate surveys of areas like what is a dialect and what isn't, and the major threads of the academic debate are presented. Every letter of the alphabet is given its history. Curious about Scouse? About the impact of Samuel Johnson and his dictionary? What is the state of opinion about the Sapir-Whorfian Hypothesis? Estuary English? Regional dialects of North America? I can't believe I haven't had this book on my shelf since the moment it was published, and I'm busy making a list of people to give it to. This a breakthrough contribution to books about English.

"Companion" well describes this book. People who love English for its own sake can flip open any page and start reading, and soon find themselves cross-referencing through the whole volume (and learning a lot). Not as essential as a dictionary or style guide, but a way to broaden your understanding of this marvellous, terrifying language and its relatives. For true language junkies, this is not for the bookshelf, but for the bathroom, to read in bits at leisure.

This book is one of the better purchases I have ever made. Every time I need a detail about the English language, literary devices and terminology, or grammatical usage, this book always has a couple of paragraphs to explain what I need to know -- and usually a handful of cross references to related topics. All with the usual careful and thorough treatment you expect from Oxford. Every library should have a copy of this book.

This work is a collection of essays of varying lengths on a wide variety of English-related projects. As such, it often makes for fascinating reading. As a reference work it falls a bit short, as the amount of attention given a particular topic seems to bear no relation to the topic's significance, nor does there seem to be any attempt at a comprehensive or well-rounded treatment of the book's subject.

Also, some of the articles have a tongue-in-cheek tone that seems a bit more casual than one would expect from a reference work; at the same time, this informality is an essential contributor to the unique character of this book. Similarly, the fact that the entire collection of esssays were written by a relatively small number of people allow for unique connections between topics -- I often found myself following paths of cross-references from one article to the next, as particular authors wrote articles on related or similar topics. (The entries on "Golden Bull Award", "Doublespeak", and related topics are truly memorable.)

Somewhat surprisingly for Oxford, there are actually several articles to which some might take offense, most notably the fairly extensive discussion of Black English Vernacular (BEV) wherein the definitions and the 'example' sentences and phrases seem -- astoundingly -- deliberately chosen from stock racial cliches. In mentioning the word 'crib', for instance, we read: "...once used to refer only to an infant's bed, comes to mean any place of residence, including a public housing project." Or, "As in Appalachian vernacular, the particle 'a' is oft used to express intention: "I'm a shoot you!"" These seem so blatently lacking in political correctness (and expediency) that one must assume they're intended to be humorous.

These caveats notwithstanding, the book is a pleasure to read, and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the English language.

This is really a unique and useful book if you ever wish to learn, or check up on, nearly anything related to the English language. Its not a dictionary of words, nor is it really an encyclopedia (although it takes on the encyclopedic format), but is rather a surprisingly comprehensive and excellently presented discussion into all things English. Entries cover everything from linguistic terms and concepts, history of the language, key persons, terminology, lexical terms, and much more. Do you want to know what an "inflected" language is? Its here. Need a refresher on "Ablative" and "Dative" cases? Its here. Want to more fully understand the subjective mood? Its here. The Queen's English Society? Shibboleth? Cryptography? Cleft Sentence? Stative Verbs? They're all here, and much, much more.

The entires for each of these topics are very well written, with just the right balance between theoretical and applied information so that you can both understand the concept and see how it is applied. As one might expect from a work written by Oxford on the subject of the English language, the entries are extremely well written, with excellent clarity that is nevertheless not watered down to meet some common denominator. Its a great reference book for whenever you need to look up a term or concept that you wish to understand more fully, but, in reality, the book is so well written and covers such an expansive set of knowledge that it can also be used just for picking up, flipping open to a random page, and then reading an entry. The learning you can achieve can be done so with a great amount of enjoyment.

I bought this book when it first came out in 1992, and when it was running about $20 for the paperback edition. It's a large book (1,100 pages), and so the price seemed reasonable, and I was never disappointed I had picked up the text. I see that now used copies of the book can be picked up for almost nothing at all (and that includes both the hardback and the paperback editions). If you are interested in English, need a companion reference, or just wish to play around and extend your learning about the subject, this is one of the best places to start. Five stars.

Some More of the Entries in the Book (there are over 3,500 total entries) ...
- Aptronym
- Bible
- Bloomfield, Leonard
- Canadian English
- Celtic Languages
- Clipping
- Eye rhyme
- Gemination
- Grimm's Law
- Humor
- Johnsonian
- Language Teaching
- Lingua Franca
- Magazine
- Mumbo Jumbo
- Pitch
- Vowel Quality
- Word
- Zeugma

See Also:
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition
The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition

Engrossing book whether you're researching a particular item or just want to browse. I was fascinated by the articles on different versions of English (Canadian, Indian etc) and their characteristics; also by all the explanations of grammatical terms. But there is much more, from biographies of famous writers, linguists etc to information on printing...If it pertains to the English language, it's in there!

Kindle owners, beware! As of the date of this writing (11/30/2008) the wrong file was attached to this title. If you download it you will receive the Oxford Dictionary of Accounting. I have contacted Amazon Customer Service and had my money refunded. The person on the phone estimated that it would take a week or so for the mistaken file to be replaced.

Once it is, I expect to be able to upgrade my review considerably. I am familiar with the full, print version of this book and it is a small marvel. Brief articles address topics from "Aelfric of Eynsham" to "Lawrence Urdang", from "Americanisms" to the "Post-Creole Continuum", and throw in "Agentless Passives", "Classical Ending", "Dyslexia","Ethnic Names","Information","Presupposition","Rasta Talk", "Semantic Field","Strine", and "Zeugma". Depending, of course, on how much of the flavor of the original is retained I imagine that I will raise my rating to a three or a four. I will be delighted to be able to carry all of this around with me on a Kindle.

There are many things I would like to know about the English Language, but too few of them are here. For example the history of English is disposed of in three pages. I should have liked to have seen 30 or so. To be sure there are other historical entries, though insufficient cross referencing. The chronology following the above entry is largely of English history rather than of language history. In place of these things are pages of information one could do without; trivia relating to broadcasting or editions of dictionaries. A topical index would have been nice. Every true philologist will nonetheless want this work.