Customer Reviews

The Origins and Development of the English Language

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Every aspect of the English languageis presented clearly and delightfully. Why does "ea" have three different pronunciations in "dream," "thread," and "great"? How did the Danish conquest of Engliand affect words like "sky" and "egg"? What words did the Roman Latin leave in English? Pyles writes great English himself.

"sklon'yat'... vo vs'ekh pad'ezhakh" -- "to decline (someone) in all the cases", so the Russian idiom goes. To discuss someone at length. Few speakers of modern English would make much sense of that idiom. Yet English was once nearly as inflected as Russian, having in common five of that language's six noun cases: the Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, and Instrumental, each with corresponding pronominal and adjectival declension. Old English nouns had gender, too, and not just masculine and feminine as in the "Romance" (Italic) Languages, but, like Russian, the neuter as well. English verbs once required more complex conjugation, and the subjunctive was used far more extensively than today. Old English structurally resembled modern European languages, and until comparatively recently, even had formal and informal second-person address. The reason for these similarities? Six modern language groups all descended from a common ancestor, Indo-European. They include Indo-Iranian (Farsi, Hindi, Romani), Balto-Slavic (Lithuanian, Russian, Polish), Celtic (Gaelic, Cornish, Welsh), Italic (French, Spanish, Roumanian), Germanic (German, Icelandic, Norwegian), and Hellenic (Greek). English is a sub-group of the Germanic branch. This book is a fascinating technical study of how English developed and changed over the centuries and was influenced by various languages and regional dialects. From Chaucer to Shakespeare to Melville to present, you'll see how English has become simplified yet enriched. Learn the reasons for the varying pronunciations of our vowel combinations and consonant clusters that drive ESL students nuts! This is a scholarly study. But you don't have to be a linguist to enjoy the text. Even the most etymologically "challenged" will easily see some distinctive similarities between Old and modern English and other Indo-European languages. BTW, that Russian idiom? We English speakers would discuss someone "every which way".

Like Josh, I had to buy this book for the History of English course in the Linguistics dept at Portland State University. My instructor was Prof. Jennifer Mittelstaedt in 2006. Also like Josh, I know this "textbook" is a keeper that will stay in my home library as a professional resource, long after I graduate. Beautifully designed with pretty cover and crisp font/layout. (Expensive, but a nice book that gives pleasure to read & hold.) Organized into easily digestible and somewhat independent sections; the many verb-class & declension tables are clearly explained. Easy to pick-and-choose which chapters to assign, if time constrained. Fascinating historical linguistics & splendid etymologies, presented with surprising humor. The writers' "voice"(s) exude a warm, mature amusement at the vicissitudes of human history - and there is certainly an abundance of vicissitude in the history of the English language! Covers morphology, semantics, syntax, and phonology of OE, ME, EModE & PDE periods. Highly recommended!

I must say that this book is genuinely exciting. In this case, you may judge the book by the cover (I think the cover's pretty nifty, anyway).

I guess you have to be into this sort of thing (linguistics) to pick up this book in the first place, but once you do, don't be afraid to read it straight through. You won't be disappointed. You learn so many interesting tidbits (and they actually have come in handy a few times). I also suggest THE MOTHER TONGUE, by Bill Bryson (come on, it's fun, even if some of the content is questionable). Together with this book you'll be a language whiz.

ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE isn't only for geeks, mind you. There's a helpful index at the back and if you want to learn more about a word or a particular age in our language's history, it's no trouble.

A la fin, this book is worth however much money it costs. It's really, really super.

Save your money. Buy this excellent, if technical, book in paperback. Be good to yourself. Save the $55.

I bought this through Amazon as a replacement of a beloved textbook I had lost years ago during a move. This newer edition is even MORE interesting with Algeo's updated material, historical perspectives, and re-organization - all without losing any of Pyles' great original. If you love English history and language, you will love this book! It covers the history of both British and American English with fascinating details and surprising revelations. For example, I'll bet many of you don't know that in the Middle Ages, English was rejected as the language of government and education in England itself for almost 300 years, which had a HUGE impact on its development. Also, did you realize that in many respects, American English is actually more conservative and has more historical characteristics than modern British English? Find out how and why in this great book!

Get this book if language interests you. I'm studying linguistics, and had to buy this book, but I'm genuinely facinated by every aspect of this topic. It is very well put together, and an intriguing read. I'll have this book long after the term is over ;)

Some parallels with modern German are obvious in verb inflections such as Middle English "thou hast" with modern German "du hast" (both meaning "you have"). But this book goes much further showing parallels in case, gender of nouns, and much more, in rich detail with lots of examples. Fascinating stuff!

The OE word for "sister" was "sweostor" (like German "Schwester"). But the Old Norse words --in this case "syster"-- won out, and this was long before the Norman Conquest of 1066 from which we got most of our Latin and Greek loan words.

This book is lean and dense (no fluff). It begins with brief overviews of language in general, what distinguishes it from animal communication, the sounds people make with a cross section of a human head to illustrate places of articulation (and related terms like "fricative" and "plosive"), and major languages families, past and present.

FAIR WARNING: you will likely be lost unless you have studied a language formally because there is a lot of detailed discussion about case, tense, noun declensions, verb inflections, and the like. But if you dig philology, come on in.

This is one of the best history texts I have ever read. Insightful, fascinating and super cool! This is a book about the history of a language that started very small and in basically 1500 years was literally able to conquer the world. It's amazing how much I am learning from this book. I will read it more than once.

I purchased this textbook for a class, and it contained a lot of information that I found extremely interesting. Most people sell their textbooks upon completion of the class, but I think I'll hold on to this one.