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The Story of English: Revised Edition Revised Edition

4.2 out of 5 stars 63 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0140154054
ISBN-10: 0140154051
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Books; Revised edition (March 1, 1993)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0140154051
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140154054
  • Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 0.8 x 9.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,990,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

Format: Library Binding Verified Purchase
The first edition of the Story of English was excellent, telling the story of the language from origins to present day in an engaging and often humorous style. I often shared stories from the book with friends and family. There were many colorful maps, diagrams and photos breathing life into the story, with vibrant language and images working together to tell the story. It was a big book telling a big story in grand manner. I still have my old, worn copy of the first edition and still love it.

When I saw there was a third edition available, I thought that it would pick up the big story from earlier editions and add to it in a big way. While ordering it, I wondered what new content and images I might find adding to the already great story. Sadly, I found the third edition to be a smaller, colorless, minimal update to the original. The third edition contains no color images and no photographs at all. The third edition is a small book mostly re-telling the original story in a less grand way. I am glad I still have my copy of the first edition.
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Format: Paperback
This book is a very readable and well researched introduction to the history of the English language. It contains a great deal of material about the many varieties of English, including separate chapters on Irish English, Scots English, American English, Caribbean English, and Australian and South African English. The photographs and maps that are featured throughout the book are excellent. The maps provide invaluable insights to the historical processes of change, and the pictures make the history come alive. In some places, it is clear that the book was written as a companion to the TV series, when the narrative takes us to an interview with a dialect speaker and then falls flat. If you have access to the video, the motivation for these interviews is much more clear when you can hear the person talk. This book would be excellent for the general reader; it would also make a good textbook for an introductory course on the development of English.
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Format: Paperback
Ralph Waldo Emerson once remarked of English that it is 'the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.'
The English language is certainly a sea of words and constructs which has been fed into by almost every major language and ethnic tradition in the world. English began as a hodge-podge of languages, never pretending to the 'purity' of more continental or extra-European languages (which, by the by, were never quite as pure as they like to assume).
The book `The Story of English', as a companion piece to accompany the PBS-produced series of the same name, hosted by Robert MacNeil, late of the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, is an articulate, engaging, wide-ranging and fair exposition of an ordinarily difficult and dry subject.
The study of English is difficult on several levels. 'Until the invention of the gramophone and the tape-recorder there was no reliable way of examining everyday speech.' What did English sound like 200 years ago, or 400 years ago? 'English is--and has always been--in a state of ungovernable change, and the limits of scholarship are demonstrated by phrases like the famous 'Great Vowel Shift', hardly more informative than the 'unknown land' of early cartography.'
Of course, written language has until modern times been the limited and limiting commodity of a very small minority of people. The balance between the written and spoken language has a variable history, which can still be seen today (compare the writing of the New York Times against the speech patterns and vocabulary choices of any dozen persons you will find on the street in New York City, and this divergence will be readily apparent).
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Format: Paperback
I first discovered this book at a local library's used-book sale. I found it fascinating and informative. As an elementary schoolteacher, I have used portions of it for reference and lessons. In this nation of immigrants, anyone with even a mild interest in language will find this book highly entertaining and educational!
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Format: Paperback
I read this book back in my 'English Conversation Teacher' days in Japan. Having been embrassed one to many times by students having to lecture me, their teacher, on the history of English, I figured I should do some 'catch-up reading.' I asked around for suggestions and was recommended 'The Story of English'.
It is free of the linguistic jargon most general readers would find pedantic, and although it is aimed at the general reader it is never condescending. The first half of the book explains the historical development of English while the second half focues on modern English.
Most refreshing though, is that it is free of the triumphalism found in many books of this kind. Reflecting the demographic reality of English today, it gives even-handed attention to the many contemporary varieties of English spoken around the world in places such as North America, Singapore, India, the Anglophone West Indies, and so on.
'The Story of English' is best suited to those who are curious about the origins as well as the future of English, and who want an easy-to-understand introduction to the subject.
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