Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language [Hardcover]

Seth Lerer (Author)

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Product Details

Hardcover: 305 pages
Publisher: Columbia University Press (April 1 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 023113794X
ISBN-13: 978-0231137942
Product Dimensions: 23.5 x 16.3 x 2.8 cm
Shipping Weight: 567 g
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #222,103 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #35 in Books > Nonfiction > Education > Reference > Words & Language > Etymology
- #62 in Books > Reference > Words & Language > Etymology

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Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Lerer is not just a scholar (he's a professor of humanities at Stanford and the man behind the Teaching Company's audio and videotape series The History of the English Language); he's also a fan of English—his passion is evident on every page of this examination of how our language came to sound—and look—as it does and how words came to have their current meanings. He writes with friendly reverence of the masters—Chaucer, Milton, Johnson, Shakespeare, Twain—illustrating through example the monumental influence they had on the English we speak and write today (Shakespeare alone coined nearly 6,000 words). Anecdotes illustrate how developments in the physical world (technological advances, human migration) gave rise to new words and word-forms. With the invention of the telephone, for instance, a neutral greeting was required to address callers whose gender and social rank weren't known. America minted "hello" (derived from the maritime "ahoy"), and soon Twain enshrined the term in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Whether it's Lerer's close examination of the earliest surviving poem in English (the seventh-century Caedmon's Hymn) or his fresh perspective on Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, the book percolates with creative energy and will please anyone intrigued by how our richly variegated language came to be. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Why doesn't anyone speak English anymore? As he responds to this frequently asked question, Lerer challenges the notion that English was once a set of carefully preserved forms inherited from linguistically correct ancestors. From seventh-century Northumbrian farmers wrapping their tongues around words borrowed from Viking invaders to late-twentieth-century media executives sponsoring word pranks to promote MTV episodes, English speakers have always adapted their idioms to fit current needs. By revisiting pivotal points of language transformation, Lerer clarifies the ways English users have rewoven the fabric of language. Readers hear, for instance, how Wulfstan forged new Anglo-Saxon words in the white heat of his eleventh-century sermons, and they see how sixteenth-century printers turned a wilderness of speech into a cultivated garden of print. And what reader will not relish time spent with Mark Twain as he grafts onto the language new expressions still as raw as the American frontier? Lerer explains language changes so lucidly and illustrates the process with such engaging anecdotes that nonspecialists will join scholars in praising this remarkable linguistic investigation. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Amazon.com: 3.4 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)

55 of 57 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Inventing English, a Portable History, May 13 2007

By G. C. Doane - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language (Hardcover)

This isn't intended to be a review.

Just that I found the book to be extremely readable, very exacting, very interesting from its historic and modern social perspective (and insights), and incredibly human.

From its interesting contrasting of Anglian from Saxon dialects, to its description of 21st century ethnic speech, it keeps the reader informed and fascinated. Each chapter could be read independently of the others.

I have long been interested in the subject of English language history, and found this to be concise, eloquent and inspiring.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Shaping Something Beautiful, July 19 2007

By C. Ebeling "ctlpareader" - Published on Amazon.com

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language (Hardcover)

I ordered INVENTING ENGLISH the minute I read the reviews and was not disappointed. In fact, it exceeded my expectations. Lerer, a Stanford professor who has produced audio lectures on the English language as well as a considerable backlog of scholarship, has created a highly readable book that goes back to the very origins of the language--its sounds, rhythms, organization, meanings and looks--in post-Roman Britain and then follows its very organic, human trail forward from Old English to Middle English to the modern language that leaped an ocean, spread across the New World and is still evolving.

Lerer has great passion for his topic and a gift for delivering information. While there is considerable technical content, it is incorporated effortlessly and backed up with a glossary and appendices. Citations from Old and Middle English literature are followed immediately by translations. With less than 300 pages, Lerer has to leap from lily pad to lily pad in time to show how the language grew with expanding human experience and was influenced by historical acts, but he seems to hit all the key moments: Caedmon in the 7th century wrapping his consonant-dense bluntish language around Christian concepts; chroniclers documenting daily lives and events; King Alfred organizing a nation state; the Norman Conquest introducing French and a language of court apart from a language of the countryside; Chaucer seizing on the internationalism of King Richard's reign; the Great Vowel Shift; Shakespeare inventing our modern language; orthographers attempting to corral it; American colonists consciously shaping it their way; and those who have continued to use it to interpret experience and communicate life, influenced by technology, warfare, politics and globalization.

There is something beautiful in a language where at the very beginning on a cold, rough shore, users were calling the ocean the "swan-road" and the "whale-road" and the word for poet was the word that became today's "shaper." It is amazing to see that even in times when human endeavor has been at its most self-destructive, the language has been able to flower and step forward.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Reading at Ease, May 5 2008

By Anne Marie Schumacher - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language (Hardcover)

If reading a history of the English language seems a daunting task, do not despair. Lerer presents his concise history as a conversation with his reader and not as an encyclopedic form. Lerer's style of writing is familiar and close, like you are having light discourse with friends over a glass of wine. He writes in short, self-contained chapters, which smoothly take the reader from seventh century English to the present. It is a book that can be read in a few nights, or if one wishes, at a more leisurely pace which does not make one feel detached from the subject. During the course of this book, Lerer connects with his readers on many levels. He offers his own feelings of inadequacy about studying the language and provides his readers with a sense of immediacy about language change. Although some prior knowledge of linguistics may be helpful, Lerer's text is complete with an appendix and glossary of terms. So, while studying the English language may not seem like easy reading, be assured that Lerer's book provides readers with the experience of reading at ease.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 15 reviews 3.4 out of 5 stars