Hitchings, who wrote earlier about Samuel Johnson's dictionary
(Defining the World, 2005), again displays his astonishing
knowledge of the English language's myriad roots.English has been
and no doubt always will be a salmagundi, the author declares,
blending words from many other tongues into one splendid,
ever-changing linguistic dish. It's vocabulary that interests him
here - grammar is far more resistant to change, he notes - and
after some factual table-setting (approximately 350 languages have
contributed to English) he serves his main courses one century at a
time. Hitchings effortlessly blends world history with linguistic
history, helping us see that we appropriate words for numerous
reasons: trade, conquest, fashion, food, art and so on. The
Anglo-Saxons, we learn, had more than 30 words for warrior. From
Arabic we gained words for alchemy that then migrated into math and
science, such as zero and cipher. Chaucer, the author writes, was
"a literary magpie" who liberated the language. The rise of the
printing press ignited another vocabulary explosion. In the 16th
century, English conflicts with Spain brought an influx of Spanish
words, among them armada, hammock and mosquito. Shakespeare is the
first known user of some 1,700 words. From the New World came
potato and tobacco; Capt. John Smith was the first to use adrift
and roomy. Greek, avers Hitchings, has remained a source of
high-culture (even highfalutin) words like deipnosophist and
pathos. Many French words deal with culture, leisure and food (no
surprise there); soiree first appeared in the fiction of Fanny
Burney. The British occupation of India brought the words teapot,
curry and pajamas. In later days, advertising, mass media, the
Internet and the "global village" have all accelerated the growth
and spread of English. Hitchings notes in several places the
impossibility and undesirability of attempting to close and bar the
doors of this eternally flexible and omnivorous tongue.Learned,
wise and educative, though a bit weighty for the average
nightstand. (Kirkus Reviews)
AN "ECONOMIST" BOOK OF THE YEAR
"The Secret Life of Words "is a wide-ranging account of the
transplanted, stolen, bastardized words we've come to know as the
English languag. It's a history of English as a whole, and of the
thousands of individual words, from more than 350 foreign tongues,
that trickled in gradually over hundreds of years of trade,
colonization, and diplomacy. Henry Hitchings narrates the story
from the Norman Conquest to the present day, chronicling the
English language as a living archive of human experience.
A SAMPLE OF THE THOUSANDS OF STORIES BEHIND THE WORDS:
- Alcatraz Island was named by a Spanish explorer who arrived in
1775 to find the island covered with pelicans, or "alcatraces." And
"alcatraces"? The word goes back to the Arabic "al-qadus," which
was a bucket used in irrigation that resembled the bucket beaks of
pelicans.
- What does a walnut have to do with walls? The word comes from
the Old English walhnutu, meaning foreign nut. They were originally
grown in Italy and imported, and the northern Europeans named them
to distinguish them from the native hazelnut.
- A crayfish is not a fish. The name comes from the old French
word "crevice," through the Old German "crebiz "and the modern
French "ecrevisse." The "fish" part is just the result of a
mishearing."
"The Secret Life of Words "is a wide-ranging chronicle of how words
witness history, reflect social change, and remind us of our
past.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
