The Story of English - Hardcover

McCrum, Robert; Cran, William; MacNeil, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670804673 ISBN 13: 9780670804672

Publisher: Viking Adult, 1986

Synopsis

Tells the anecdotal history of the English language from its obscure Anglo-Saxon origins to its present status as the world's most prominent, expressive, and fast-growing international language

About this title

About the Author:

Robert McCrum is Books Editor of the Observer. He lives in London.

From Library Journal:

A tie-in for a nine-part television series to be broadcast over PBS beginning in September, this is a wide-ranging account of the travels and changes of the English tongue from its beginnings to tomorrow, from England to America to Australia to Africa and India and the Pacific. Despite an occasionally perceptible British bias, the authors have tried hard to paint a colorful, vivid picture of the many faces and varieties of English. The text is never dull, but is enlivened by innumerable examples and by interviews with representative individuals: a minister in Scotland, a couple from the Appalachians, a storekeeper in Newfoundland, a Philadelphia shoeshine man, a cockney fruitseller, an Australian farm family, the president of Sierra Leone, a writing professor in India. A readable book that all public libraries should have. BOMC alternate. Catherine V. von Schon, SUNY, Stony Brook
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0670804673
• ISBN 13: 9780670804672
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384