| Edition |
First American edition. |
| Description |
384 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 26 cm |
| Note |
"Elisabeth Sifton books." |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliography: pages 353-368 and index. |
| Contents |
Table of illustrations -- Introduction: Speaking of English -- Chapter 1: English-speaking world -- Chapter 2: Mother tongue -- Chapter 3: Muse of fire -- Chapter 4: Guid scots tongue -- Chapter 5: Irish question -- Chapter 6: Black on white -- Chapter 7: Pioneers! O pioneers! -- Chapter 9: New Englishes -- Epilogue: Next year's words -- Notes and sources -- Table of maps -- Picture credits -- Acknowledgements -- Index. |
| Summary |
Library Journal: A tie-in for a nine-part television series to be broadcast over PBS beginning in September, this is a wide-ranging account of the travels and changes of the English tongue from its beginnings to tomorrow, from England to America to Australia to Africa and India and the Pacific. Despite an occasionally perceptible British bias, the authors have tried hard to paint a colorful, vivid picture of the many faces and varieties of English. The text is never dull, but is enlivened by innumerable examples and by interviews with representative individuals: a minister in Scotland, a couple from the Appalachians, a storekeeper in Newfoundland, a Philadelphia shoeshine man, a cockney fruitseller, an Australian farm family, the president of Sierra Leone, a writing professor in India. A readable book that all public libraries should have. BOMC alternate. Catherine V. von Schon, SUNY, Stony Brook. |
| Subject |
English language -- History.
|
| Added Author |
Cran, William.
|
|
MacNeil, Robert, 1931-
|
| Other Form: |
Online version: McCrum, Robert. Story of English. 1st American ed. New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Viking, 1986 (OCoLC)646949407 |
| ISBN |
0670804673 |
|
9780670804672 |
|
