Hi, for those of you who are interested in English I can thoroughly recommend 2 excellent books:
"The English Language. A Historical Introduction" Charles Barber Cambridge University Press, 1993 0-521-78570-7 It does exactly what it says on the cover. "The English Language" David Crystal Penguin, 1988 0-14-013532-4 Crystal is Mr. Linguistics round here. We used several of his textbooks when I was studying the subject at poly. This book looks at varieties & uses of modern English as well as at the history of the language. It's more of a layman's book than Barber's, but Barber's is not at all difficult and includes an introduction to elementary linguistics. He shows the development with examples from the IE family, through Germanic languages, OE, Norse, ME, Early Modern up to date, and concludes with chapters on English as a world language, and its future. He gives a very good and interesting example of how English has changed by tracing the story of the prodigal son from a pre-Conquest OE bible through to the current New English bible. --- Bob mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Friday, March 15, 2002, 7:41:21 PM, you wrote: > Well, others answered the IR questions while I was busy, so here's > some off-topic stuff I know a smidgen about. >> Probably when someone realized "que" was french for "k". When are you Limeys >> going to get over the fact you were invaded in 1092 (that the right date?) > You're probably thinking of William's invasion in 1066, the Battle > of Hastings, and all that. One of the medieval re-enactment groups > I'm in does a small recreation of the battles of Hastings and Stamford > Bridge each October. >> and go back to using Angel Saxton English instead of French English? <GRIN> > Old English sounds a lot like German to me (I don't speak either, so I > don't know how similar they sound to a German speaker). > Middle English is pretty cool, and I can nearly understand it[*]. As > far as I can tell, the jokes about Middle English being the result of > Norman soldiers trying to pick up Saxon women are about right. > -- Glenn > [*] BUt it's a pain to type in a mostly-ASCII environment, what with > thorns and eths and yoghs and diaresis marks and all those other nifty > bits. Looks pretty cool typeset, though I wound up using a numeral > three in place of the yogh because I couldn't find a font with a yogh > in it compatible with the stuff I was using. > PS: One of the more intelligible bits, from the song, "Man mai longe > lives weene": > Weilawei! Nis king ne queene thet ne ssel drink of deathes drench. > Man, er thu vall of thi bench, thi senn aquench. > - > This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, > go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to > visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org . - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
