- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: Delta (May 1 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0385340842
- ISBN-13: 978-0385340847
- Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 1.9 x 18.9 cm
- Shipping Weight: 227 g
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#402,167 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #52 in Books > Nonfiction > Education > Reference > Words & Language > Spelling
- #63 in Books > Reference > Words & Language > Spelling
- #82 in Books > Nonfiction > Education > Reference > Words & Language > Etymology
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
British author Essinger (Jacquard's Web: How a Hand Loom Led to the Birth of the Information Age) provides an enlightening and enjoyable excursion into "the magical nature" of writing through the history of English spelling. Essinger provides many examples of English's well-known inconsistency between spelling and pronunciation, and the fact that many words are spelled illogically and arbitrarily. But there is, he says, "method in the madness" and concludes that there is no need for reform. Essinger notes fascinating research showing that some dyslexic children find Chinese characters easier to comprehend than written English, because Chinese characters relate to meaning rather than sound. Extremely valuable is the author's well-researched chronicle of the evolution of English spelling, beginning with the invasion of William the Conqueror in 1066, through Middle English ( a hybrid of Norman French and Anglo Saxon) and the subsequent transformation into Modern English. The rise of Modern English was sparked by changes in pronunciation, the influence of the Renaissance, which led to heavy borrowing from Latin and Greek, and the introduction of the printing press. Essinger takes the influence of technology through the present, looking at the impact of e-mail and text messaging. A good-humored buoyant style helps make this examination of the origin and current state of English spelling a pleasure to read. (May 1)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“His enthusiasm is contagious.... Mr. Essinger explains convincingly why our verb inflections are as simple as they are and why our nouns have no grammatical gender.”—Wall Street Journal
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.9 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews)
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Superficial, Aug 24 2007
By Glitzer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Spellbound: The Surprising Origins and Astonishing Secrets of English Spelling (Paperback)
In my opinion, this book cannot compete with more careful and serious works on the same subject. If you are interested in this topic, my recommendation would be to read Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World or Speak: A Short History of Languages. You can (and in fact should) then safely skip this one.My overall impression is that Essinger (not a scholar and not an expert on the subject) hastily read a few popular books on the subject and then added his own effort. A first piece of evidence is the bibliography, which is amazingly short and contains very few serious works. More to the point, throughout the book Essinger has the annoying habit of using his prejudices and his extremely vivid imagination to fill gaps in our historical knowledge. The results are usually absurd.
Some examples: The Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain are "smelly." (That seems to change later with Alfred the Great, when the Anglo-Saxons become the good guys and their body odor no longer merits Essinger's attention.)
The Norman conquerors, on the other hand, get a more sympathetic treatment right away: they were not oppressors (Essinger writes). This point is forcefully driven home a few paragraphs later by pointing out that they disowned and/or killed the local aristocracy.
While serious scholars are puzzled by the fact that the Germanic conquerors kept their language in Britain but nowhere else in the Roman empire, Essinger knows the answer: continental Celts and Romans had nowhere to hide, so they decided to teach the Germans Latin, while their British counterparts ran away (or were killed, Essinger isn't very clear here and generally cares little about consistency).
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
English language spelling is charming? Absolutely!, Jun 22 2007
By Julie - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Spellbound: The Surprising Origins and Astonishing Secrets of English Spelling (Paperback)
The English language, in particular its spelling, is a strange and wonderful beast. Essinger gets to the heart of it in Spellbound. There are many facts that won't be a surprise to most reading the book, such as much of the language being influenced by the mix of Anglo-Saxon with Norman French or the borrowing of words from other cultures as they are encountered. It's the information beyond the facts, which have obviously been well-researched, that gives the book its flavor.Yes, it is a book about spelling, and if anything ever was a bane of school children, it could be that. Essinger approaches it with a delight and joy that is contagious. As I read the book, there were points in it where I literally laughed out loud because of the wit and humor in the pages. At other times, I felt awe and wonder that the English language ever came to be. Something that many people think is a dry subject comes alive in the book. As the author writes in the Introduction, it becomes magical.
The book achieves what the author wanted to do in making something accessible to the general public, not just academics. It is neither pompous or boring. Instead, it's interesting and fun. In short... very highly recommended.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Superficial but Popularly Written Study of a Scholarly Topic, Jun 20 2009
By M. Layton - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Spellbound: The Surprising Origins and Astonishing Secrets of English Spelling (Paperback)
Essinger has given a serious linguistic subject a popular treatment that is in many ways quite superficial. While he can do no great harm with the book and may actually help some to become better spellers, he has made several glaring errors as well. For example, he says that the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes were speakers of Old High German when, in fact, they spoke a Low German language, just as the people of that region of Germany and Denmark from which they came still do in their local dialects. Essinger also oversimplifies Modern English as a Creole of Norman French and Anglo-Saxon to explain why inflection has largely been lost from Modern English. While that may be partly true, it is also true that English underwent sound shifts other than the Great Vowel Shift to which this inflection loss can also be attributed. If you know nothing about the subject, you may enjoy this book. Serious students of English language history need not bother.
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