Inventing English : : A Portable History of the Language / / Seth Lerer.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Lerer, Seth,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2007]; ©2007
• Year of Publication: 2007
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (320 p.) :; 18 illus.

Why is there such a striking difference between English spelling and English pronunciation? How did our seemingly relatively simple grammar rules develop? What are the origins of regional dialect, literary language, and everyday speech, and what do they have to do with you? Seth Lerer's Inventing English is a masterful, engaging history of the English language from the age of Beowulf to the rap of Eminem. Many have written about the evolution of our grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary, but only Lerer situates these developments in the larger history of English, America, and literature.Lerer begins in the seventh century with the poet Caedmon learning to sing what would become the earliest poem in English. He then looks at the medieval scribes and poets who gave shape to Middle English. He finds the traces of the Great Vowel Shift in the spelling choices of letter writers of the fifteenth century and explores the achievements of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of 1755 and The Oxford English Dictionary of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He describes the differences between English and American usage and, through the example of Mark Twain, the link between regional dialect and race, class, and gender. Finally, he muses on the ways in which contact with foreign languages, popular culture, advertising, the Internet, and e-mail continue to shape English for future generations. Each concise chapter illuminates a moment of invention-a time when people discovered a new form of expression or changed the way they spoke or wrote. In conclusion, Lerer wonders whether globalization and technology have turned English into a world language and reflects on what has been preserved and what has been lost. A unique blend of historical and personal narrative, Inventing English is the surprising tale of a language that is as dynamic as the people to whom it belongs.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- A Note on Texts and Letter Forms -- Introduction: Finding English, Finding Us -- 1. Caedmon Learns to Sing -- 2. From Beowulf to Wulfstan -- 3. In This Year -- 4. From Kingdom to Realm -- 5. Lord of This Langage -- 6. I Is as Ille a Millere as Are Ye -- 7. The Great Vowel Shift and the Changing Character of English -- 8. Chancery, Caxton, and the Making of English Prose -- 9. I Do, I Will -- 10. A Universal Hubbub Wild -- 11. Visible Speech -- 12. A Harmless Drudge -- 13. Horrid, Hooting Stanzas -- 14. Antses in the Sugar -- 15. Hello, Dude -- 16. Ready for the Funk -- 17. Pioneers Through an Untrodden Forest -- 18. Listening to Private Ryan -- 19. He Speaks in Your Voice -- Appendix: English Sounds and Their Representation -- Glossary -- References and Further Reading -- Acknowledgments -- Index