Synopses & Reviews
The Stories of English is a groundbreaking history of the language by David Crystal, the world-renowned writer and commentator on English. Other books have been written on the subject, but they focused on the educated, printed language called standard English. Crystal turns the history of the language on its head and provides a startlingly original view of where the richness, creativity, and diversity of the language truly lies in the accents and dialects of nonstandard English users all over the globe. Interwoven within this central chronological story are accounts of uses of dialect around the world as well as in literary classics from The Canterbury Tales to The Lord of the Rings. For the first time, regional speech and writing is placed center stage. This significant shift in perspective enables the reader to understand the importance of everyday, previously marginalized, voices in our language, and provides an argument for the way English should be taught in the future.
Review
"[A] work of unprecedented scope and range...with piquant detail and lively anecdote....Accessible to the nonspecialist, Crystal's rich chronicle still presses deeply enough into key episodes to entice even casual readers into the more scholarly sources listed at the end of the book." Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"Mr. Crystal...chooses his examples brilliantly." The New York Times Book Review
Review
"A dense, significant history. Had it been shorter and otherwise more reader-friendly, it could have made waves. Regrettably, only ripples will likely ensue." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"This new history of the English language in all its manifestations is among the best ever written, and is both entertaining and informative." Steven Pinker, author of The Language Instinct
Review
"Simply the best introductory history of the English language family that we have. The plan of the book is ingenious, the writing lively, the exposition clear, and the scholarly standard uncompromisingly high." J. M. Coetzee (Nobel Prize for fiction 2003)
Review
"[A] wonderful postmodern study of the history of the English language, for both the scholar and the educated reader....As its title implies, it tells many stories and tells them well." Library Journal
Synopsis
The groundbreaking history of the English language, fusing chronological with anecdotal and etymological accounts of individual word-histories, to create not ONE story, by many stories.
Alongside standard English we have a rich variety of the language from around the world.
About the Author
David Crystal is honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor, and the editor of
The Penguin Encyclopedia.
Table of Contents
Ch. 1 The origins of Old English 15
Ch. 2 The old English dialects 34
Ch. 3 Early lexical diversity 57
Ch. 4 Stylistic variation in Old English 86
Ch. 5 The transition to Middle English 105
Ch. 6 A trilingual nation 121
Ch. 7 Lexical invasions 144
Ch. 8 Evolving variation 169
Ch. 9 A dialect age 194
Ch. 10 The emerging standard 222
Ch. 11 Printing and its consequences 254
Ch. 12 Early modern English preoccupations 285
Ch. 13 Linguistic daring 311
Ch. 14 Dialect fallout 338
Ch. 15 Stabilizing disorder 365
Ch. 16 Standard rules 392
Ch. 17 New horizons 419
Ch. 18 Linguistic life goes on 453
Ch. 19 And dialect life goes on 484
Ch. 20 Times a-changin' 514
App The location of the towns and counties of England referred to in this book 535