Crazy English [Paperback]

One of the most unforgettable moments of my youth was learning the word pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. I was in third grade. So what if Richard Lederer has come up with a chemical compound that consists of 1,913 letters? Owning a word like pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is empowering at any age. If you have ever been completely wowed by the power you can have over language, or its power over you, Richard Lederer is your patron saint. His oft-reprinted introduction to Crazy English, which was originally published in 1989, claims that English is "the most loopy and wiggy of all tongues." And then he demonstrates: "In what other language do people drive in a parkway and park in a driveway? ... Why do they call them apartments when they're all together?" And so on. Lederer's pace is frenetic. He alights on oxymorons ("pretty ugly," "computer jock"), redundancies, confusing words (are you sure you know the meaning of enormity?), phobias, contronyms, heteronyms, retroactive terms (acoustic guitar, rotary phone), and a host of other linguistic delights.

Though English may be one of the crazier languages--Lederer claims that about 80 percent of our words are not spelled phonetically--they are all, he says, a little crazy. "That's because language is invented ... by boys and girls and men and women, not computers. As such, language reflects the creative and fearful asymmetry of the human race, which, of course, isn't really a race at all." --Jane Steinberg

Lederer "adroitly mixes instruction with hilarity by showing that English, though the richest and most widely used of all the world's languages, is 'crazy.' The text is a dazzling collection of anagrams, alliterations, idioms, illogical spelling rules and larky oxymora," wrote PW.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

In what other language, asks Lederer, do people drive on a parkway and park in a driveway, and your nose can run and your feet can smell? In CRAZY ENGLISH, Lederer frolics through the logic-boggling byways of our language, discovering the names for phobias you didn't know you could have, the longest words in our dictionaries, and the shortest sentence containing every letter in the alphabet. You'll take a bird's-eye view of our beastly language, feast on a banquet of mushrooming food metaphors, and meet the self-reflecting Doctor Rotcod, destined to speak only in palindromes.

Richard Lederer is the author of more than 30 books about language, history, and humor, including his best-selling Anguished English series and his current book, Presidential Trivia. He has been profiled in magazines as diverse as The New Yorker, People, and the National Enquirer and frequently appears on radio as a commentator on language. Dr. Lederer's syndicated column, "Looking at Language," appears in newspapers and magazines throughout the United States. He has been named International Punster of the Year and Toastmasters International's Golden Gavel winner.