Synopsis
Crystal (honorary, linguistics, U. of Wales-Bangor) has written widely on language in general and English in particular. He begins here by tracing the history of how Standard English came to be the privileged tongue it is. Then he recounts the stories of the other facets of the language over the past 1,500 years, which are rarely told. His topics include the Celtic language puzzle, understanding Danes, a trilingual nation, where the -s ending came from, avoiding transcriptional anemia, the case of y'all, and dialect in Middle Earth. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Thke New York Times - William Grimes
Mr. Crystal, in arguing that "eternal tolerance" should replace "eternal vigilance," chooses his examples brilliantly. Those of us who tut-tut when "nuclear" comes out "nucular" need to be reminded that polite Victorians pronounced balcony with the stress on the second syllable, like baloney. Not so long ago, correct English did not permit a sentence like "John is being promoted." The progressive passive of "is being" was despised by refined stylists. Students do need to learn the rules, just as they need to understand computer protocols, as a means to an end. Standard English, and the basic rules of grammar and syntax that govern it, have to be taught. But Mr. Crystal assigns no particular value to "are not" over "ain't." In fact, he likes to sum up his vision of the future of English, or Englishes, in one cheery, defiantly ungrammatical American sentence: "We ain't seen nothin' yet." Full speed ahead to the 14th century.