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The Miracle of Language

Name: The Miracle of Language
Author: Richard Lederer
ISBN: 9780671028114

by Richard Lederer

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Overview

Master verbalist Richard Lederer, America's "Wizard of Idiom" (Denver Post), presents a love letter to the most glorious of human achievements...

Welcome to Richard Lederer's beguiling celebration of language — of our ability to utter, write, and receive words. No purists need stop here. Mr. Lederer is no linguistic sheriff organizing posses to hunt down and string up language offenders. Instead, join him "In Praise of English," and discover why the tongue described in Shakespeare's day as "of small reatch" has become the most widely spoken language in history:

English never rejects a word because of race, creed, or national origin. Did you know that jukebox comes from Gullah and canoe from Haitian Creole?
Many of our greatest writers have invented words and bequeathed new expressions to our eveyday conversations. Can you imagine making up almost ten percent of our written vocabulary? Scholars now know that William Shakespeare did just that!

He also points out the pitfalls and pratfalls of English. If a man mans a station, what does a woman do? In the "The Department of Redundancy Department," "Is English Prejudiced?" and other essays, Richard Lederer urges us not to abandon that which makes us human: the capacity to distinguish, discriminate, compare, and evaluate.

An eye-opening, entertaining, informative and inspiring tribute to our mother tongue from the bestselling author of Crazy English and The Play of Words. America's wittiest verbalist examines the unparalleled successes--and shortcomings--of what has become the most widely spoken language in history. "Delightful and contagious."-- Edwin Newman.

About the Author, Richard Lederer

Richard Lederer is the author of more than 30 books about language, history, and humor, including his best-selling Anguished English series and his current book, Presidential Trivia. He has been profiled in magazines as diverse as The New Yorker, People, and the National Enquirer and frequently appears on radio as a commentator on language. Dr. Lederer's syndicated column, "Looking at Language," appears in newspapers and magazines throughout the United States. He has been named International Punster of the Year and Toastmasters International's Golden Gavel winner.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In this collection of entertaining and enlightening essays--BOMC and QPB alternates selection in cloth--Lederer celebrates language as ``incomparably the finest of our achievements.'' (Oct.)

School Library Journal

YA-- This latest collection by the noted verbalist sparkles like a gem. It is finely polished, well crafted, and certain to delight. Readers are invited to ponder if our mother tongue is indeed prejudiced. The misuse of redundant words and how new words are born are also explored. On a deeper level, beyond the wit and bouyancy, Lederer shows that words are not just used to engage but also to instruct. This collection of essays is a treasure and should be cherished by all who open it.-- Mary I. Quinn, Fairfax County Public Library, George Mason Regional, Annandale, VA

Kirkus Reviews

New England schoolmaster, columnist, and bestselling author Lederer (Crazy English, 1989) offers an enthusiastic new assemblage in tribute to language generally and the English kind in particular. Sounding in turn like D'Israeli the Elder on curiosities of literature, William Targ on bibliomania, H.L. Mencken on words, or William Lutz on doublespeak, Lederer compiles a scrapbook that preaches, naturally, to those who are devoted to the wonder of words aggregated. There are tributes to heroes of our tongue: Shakespeare, Johnson (with incursions by Bierce and other witty lexicographers), Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, and George Orwell. In terms of one syllable, Lederer proves the power of short words. They can, he says, "make a straight point between two minds," which seems a little hard to do, but you get the line. English isn't perfect, however: It's sexist (queens do not rule queendoms), lacks certain utilitarian words (what will we call the decade that will follow the Nineties?), and lends itself to redundant repetition, too, as Lederer cheerfully illustrates and shows. He likes libraries and letter-writing (citing St. Paul as a great correspondent). There's even a lesson in versification and examples of favored writing from his prep- school students. The text concludes with a few hundred pithy comments on words by practitioners from Aristophanes to Wittgenstein. A golly-gee skimming of the manifest wonders of "the most glorious of all human inventions," not deep but easygoing enough to satisfy Lederer's legion of fans.