English Language History

In The English and their History, the first full-length account to appear in one volume for many decades, Robert Tombs gives us the history of the English people and of how the stories they have told about themselves have shaped them, from the prehistoric 'dreamtime' through to the present day.

In The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker marries two of the subjects he knows best: language and human nature. The result is a fascinating look at how our words explain our nature. What does swearing reveal about our emotions? Why does innuendo disclose something about relationships? Pinker reveals how our use of prepositions and tenses taps into peculiarly human concepts of space and time, and how our nouns and verbs speak to our notions of matter.

Splendiferous Speech explores the main sources of the American vernacular - the expanding western frontier, the bumptious world of politics, and the sensation-filled pages of popular 19th-century newspapers. It's a process that started with the earliest English colonists (first word adoption - the Algonquian raccoon) and is still going strong today. Author Rosemarie Ostler takes listeners along on the journey as Americans learn to declare linguistic independence and embrace their own brand of speech.

After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology.

Read Between the Lines Poetry Book, by author Reneé Drummond-Brown, depicts precept upon precept, line upon line, little here and a little there, stroke by stroke, mark by mark, ink by ink, stripe by stripe, link by link, stain by stain, and blood by blood.

In this classic, the world’s expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association....

As the main spoken language of the Jews for more than a thousand years, Yiddish has had plenty to lament, plenty to conceal. Its phrases and expressions paint a comprehensive picture of the mind-set that enabled the Jews of Europe to survive persecution: they never stopped kvetching about God, gentiles, children, and everything else.

It seems impossible: a small island in the North Atlantic, colonized by Rome, then pillaged for hundreds of years by marauding neighbors, becomes the dominant world power in the 19th century. Equally unlikely, a colony of that island nation across the Atlantic grows into the military and cultural colossus of the 20th century. How? By the sword, of course; by trade and industrial ingenuity; but principally, and most surprisingly, by the power of their common language.

At its height in 660 BCE, the kingdom of Assyria stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. It was the first empire the world had ever seen. Here, historian Eckart Frahm tells the epic story of Assyria and its formative role in global history. Assyria’s wide-ranging conquests have long been known from the Hebrew Bible and later Greek accounts. But nearly two centuries of research now permit a rich picture of the Assyrians and their empire beyond the battlefield.

Introducing "The King James Bible Reference Guide" - your comprehensive and captivating resource for understanding the timeless and influential King James Bible. Explore the thrilling history, remarkable language, and profound impact of one of the world's most renowned translations of the holy scriptures, all in one engaging eBook! Dive into the dramatic origin story of the King James Bible, encompassing a rich tapestry of intrigue, devotion, and scholarship. Understand the significance of this profound translation and uncover how it has shaped literature, society, and spirituality ...

Reneé Drummond-Brown’s tome My INK Bleeds Black, speaks volumes to our testament as wisdom turns her poetic pages on women of color. Therefore, writing is a vital tool for me to pen (snippets of) our honest historical dark accounts if I want to live and prosper in this thing called life. Furthermore, vantablack INK is brilliantly lent and smeared throughout this book. As a result, the infallible scripted Word “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matthew 5:18 King James Version - KJV) ...

The Foundations of Faith series features important writings from the early Christian Church, with modernized language to make these influential works more accessible to today's reader. Included in Volume 1 are the following works: The Didache (The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) The First and Second Epistles of Clement The Epistle of Barnabas The Odes of Solomon The Epistle of Polycarp The Martyrdom of Polycarp The Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus The Seven Prison Epistles of Ignatius Ignatius to the Ephesians Ignatius to the Magnesians Ignatius to the Trallians Ignatius to the Romans ...

Dive into a riveting linguistic journey with our compelling new eBook, "Mastering Euskara." Unlock the nuances and discover the beauty of the Basque language as you traverse through 30 meticulously crafted chapters. Beginning with the intriguing history and evolution of Euskara in Chapter 2, each subsequent chapter gradually unveils the unique linguistic features of this ancient language. Chapters 3-8 guide you through the linguistics, from the unique sounds to the sophisticated verb conjugations, leading you towards forming sentences smoothly. From Chapter 9 onwards, you're introduced to ...

Le Guin’s sharp and witty voice is on full display in this collection of twenty-four essays, revised by the author a decade after its initial publication in 1979. The collection covers a wide range of topics and Le Guin’s origins as a writer, her advocacy for science fiction and fantasy as mediums for true literary exploration, the writing of her own major works such as A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness, and her role as a public intellectual and educator.

In The Language of the Heart: Bill W.’s Grapevine Writings, listeners will find Bill’s initial inspirations for what became the Twelve Traditions, his battles with chronic depression and spiritual pride, memories of an all-night drinking spree, and a vivid description of how he came to organize the Twelve Steps (there were six in the first draft). For anyone in recovery from alcoholism or addiction, this uplifting and poignant collection provides a view into the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous as well as deep insights on emotional sobriety and personal struggle.

At her execution Mary, Queen of Scots wore red. Widely known as the colour of strength and passion, it was in fact worn by Mary as the Catholic symbol of martyrdom. In 16th-century Europe, women's voices were suppressed and silenced. Even for a queen like Mary, her prime duty was to bear sons. In an age when textiles expressed power, Mary exploited them to emphasise her female agency.

Drawing on evidence from many fields, including archaeology, anthropology, neurology and linguistics, Sverker Johansson weaves these disparate threads together to show how our human ancestors evolved into language users. The Dawn of Language provides a fascinating survey of how grammar came into being and the differences or similarities between languages spoken around the world, before exploring how language eventually emerged in the very remote human past.

One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind asks where the self comes from - and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the "strange loop" - a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called "I". The "I" is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse.

Nearly everyone swears - whether it's over a few too many drinks, in reaction to a stubbed toe, or in flagrante delicto. And yet we sit idly by as words are banned from television and censored in books. We insist that people excise profanity from their vocabularies, and we punish children for yelling the very same dirty words that we'll mutter in relief seconds after they fall asleep. Swearing, it seems, is an intimate part of us that we have decided to selectively deny.

Perhaps no novelist has meant more to contemporary fiction than Toni Morrison. And in addition to being a Nobel Prize-winning novelist, Morrison spent 17 years as the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University, teaching courses in African American studies, creative writing, and American literature.