The Adventure of English
The Biography of a LanguageBy Bragg, Melvyn
Length11h 49m
About this audiobook
“Superb. . . . Inspiring.”—Newsday. “A captivating history.”--The Daily Telegraph. “A thorough and incredibly enjoyable trip down a linguistic memory lane.”—Bloomsbury ReviewHere is the riveting story of the English language, from its humble beginnings as a regional dialect to its current preeminence as the one global language, spoken by more than two billion people worldwide. In this groundbreaking book, Melvyn Bragg shows how English conquered the world. It is a magnificent adventure, full of jealousy, intrigue, and war—against a hoard of invaders, all armed with their own conquering languages, which bit by bit, the speakers of English absorbed and made their own.Along the way, its colorful story takes in a host of remarkable people, places, and events: the Norman invasion of England in 1066; the arrival of The Canterbury Tales and a “coarse” playwright named William Shakespeare, who added 2,000 words to the language; the songs of slaves; the words of Davy Crockett; and the Lewis and Clark expedition, which led to hundreds of new words as the explorers discovered unknown flora and fauna.The Adventure of English is an enthralling story not only of power, religion, and trade, but also of a people and how they changed the world.
Audiobook details
Rating★★★★ 4.2 (7.8K)
Includes Goodreads, Amazon, LibraryThing, StoryGraph
GenreEducation and Learning
Length11 hrs 49 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateApr 1, 2011
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Also by
1514 - Wild West Words
21 - The Common Tongue
1615 - Sold Down the River
32 - The Great Escape
1716 - Mastering the Language
43 - Conquest
1817 - The Proper Way to Talk
54 - Holding On
1918 - Steam, Streets and Slang
Show all chaptersShow less
65 - The Speech of Kings
2019 - Indian Takeover
76 - Chaucer
2120 - The West Indies
87 - God’s English
2221 - Advance Australia
98 - English and the Language of the State
2322 - Warts and All
109 - William Tyndale’s Bible
2423 - All Over the World
1110 - A Renaissance of Words
2524 - And Now . . . ?
1211 - Preparing the Ground
26Picture Acknowledgments
1312 - Shakespeare’s English
27Bibliography
1413 - “My America”
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