TALK ABOUT ENGLISH: How Words Travel and Change by Janet Klausner
Kirkus Star

TALK ABOUT ENGLISH: How Words Travel and Change

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A fascinating survey of the origins of the world's most diverse and extensive language. Opening with a history of English as it absorbed and was transformed by the languages of successive invaders, Klausner goes on to trace many of the words with common roots, the diverse origins of synonyms, words derived from names, and words born of truncation, abbreviation, or their creators' imaginations. Her narrative is dear, lively, and peppered with a generous number of examples and anecdotes (not always germane, but usually interesting); the whole conveys a cheerful enthusiasm for our matchlessly subtle, irrepressible, still burgeoning tongue. An excellent introduction that will be of interest not only to older children but to anyone struggling with the idiosyncracies of English as a second language.

Pub Date: Oct. 30th, 1990
Page count: 208pp
Publisher: Crowell