BootsnAll Travel Community

All petty nonsense aside, the history of English can be a very interesting topic for those of us who speak it. (In my case, badly.) I happened upon a handy, two volume Oxford etymological dictionary when I was but a wee OP not yet Continental. Since then, the history of languages has always been an interest.

I've enjoyed Bill Bryson's books on the subject, and highly recommend them to anyone interested in an informal history of English and English slang. His books, The Mother Tongue and Made In America are particularly entertaining. There's a wonderful narrative of advertising's disastrous effect on 20th century American English in the latter, as well as a breakdown of its effects internationally in the former.

If anyone else has some recommendations for the study of this subject, please feel free to post here.

I have no such recommendation.

I just wanted to say that the thing I have come to love about English the most, is its' fluidity. I embrace media English, pigin English, varient English, Spanglish, Russlish, and other hybrids yet unmet.

It is the beauty of English that it changes by mood, by day, by location, by influence. My Russian coworkers (colleagues to you Brits ) have often said when they are in agreement "I am agree." I love this usage and I have adopted it. It suits me. English is the best of languages because the rules are so itinerant and usage is so flexible. Other languages are not so forgiving.

In my travels I have met British English, Austrailian English, Indian *English*, Irish and otherworldly Scottish English , and the strangest of all, South African English. All English, and all totally different, yet comprehensible as English.

English is the best of languages--it tolerates abuse, mediaisms, localisms, idioms, badly translated foreign speakers--yet we all manage to understand the gist of things at the end of the day. I love English in all its' variants and speakers.

(The thing I hate most about English are its' apostrophe's. Buggers they are.)

Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct is an entertaining read even if it's not actually about language history. A good reference book, also quite broad in scope, is David Crystal's (ed) Encyclopedia of Language. Popular linguistics is just such an interesting subject.

Thanks for the recommendations, Haci. I've read some of Chomsky's thoughts on the subject, but I've never read Pinker's book.

You all are very serious on this thread. If I could manage to knock off even half the 3-4 feet of books I've bought but not read yet, then a few of these would be great! Ah...some day...

That said, and on a less serious note, is David Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day which left me in giggles and tears every few pages. In the second part of the book, there are essays on his difficulty with French after moving to Paris. He's a really good writer. Humph, I guess I read the book at a time when I was just rediscovering how much I like English after spending two years dumbing it down. (Yes. My Name Stu. I am liking this a lot. Yes, good.)

(Sedaris also narrates the audio book and reads some of it publicly and on NPR, all of which is highly entertaining.)

After two years here in Zurich, I finally started hanging out with native English speakers again and it was soooooooooooooo nice to be able to play with words and language and such.

Now that I think about it, all this also coincided with a phase in life where reading became a chore and work related. Hmmm...

quote:

Originally posted by Stoo:
After two years here in Zurich, I finally started hanging out with native English speakers again and it was soooooooooooooo nice to be able to play with words and language and such.

Ha! It's funny you say this. It is one of the finer points of being an expat that often goes unmentioned. There is a certain restraint when it comes to flourishing use of one's native tongue. Since being back in the U.S., it's been nice to speak English without qualifications and exposition. I'm going to miss it.

I don't (yet) live overseas, but in my regular Italian conversation group - and anytime I'm around Italians where I can practice a bit - the thing that frustrates me most is that I end up sounding like a child when I speak Italian. Sure, I can get my point across, but without the color and humor that I am able to do effortlessly in English. There's no pizzazz to my Italian, which always feels such a shame, given that it's such a flowery language. Perhaps someday...

(Sorry, off-topic a bit...)

quote:

Originally posted by JessieS:
There's no pizzazz to my Italian, which always feels such a shame, given that it's such a flowery language.

It's tough. Italian is a language of over-extended metaphors and similes. (I like to kid friends that Italians themselves are over-extended metaphors.) My Italian is heavily influenced by two different dialects, so most of my expressions aren't universal. When speaking plain, old "I need you to understand me clearly and quickly, Fiorentino" Italian, I too speak it in a terse, staccato rhythm.

Frankly, Italian has had a horrible effect on my English. I tend to break English sentences & paragraphs into Italian rhythms, which makes for pompous English. (As many have probably read first hand here on BnA .)

I'd say JessieS' issue is not Italian-centric, and I feel her pain...il suo Italiano parla ist besser als mein Deutscher

This may surprise all of you, but I've got a lot to say, and am happy to share my plate of cerebral dips-n-chips! Decorating the main course of an idea with entertaining linguistic garnish is tasty. MAKING MY WORDS SMALL TO MAKE YOU UNDERSTAND is unappetizing. Sorta like we mentioned earlier in the thread, uncle coop.

Telling people I am a vegetarian (Ich bin Vegetarisch) in German is boring, yet essential, with my limited mud-speak. But, telling people that I eat nothing with a face, nothing with a mother, or (best yet) I hate vegetables (and want to kill them all with my jaws) spices up the conversation.

It takes more than being able to make oneself clear in baby talk, to recite a phrase as it should be, etc. FFS, the humor might not even translate!

(Then again, lots of humor seems international. I won't even go into the shared disaster at the grocery store (coincidently, called 'COOP') this morning with the eastern block auslander clerk.

quote:

Originally posted by Stooecorating the main course of an idea with entertaining linguistic garnish is tasty.

Lol. I've often tried this in Dutch just to see the horrified expressions on their faces. But if you throw in some Afrikaans slang for good measure, there is a look of surprise and (for some godless reason) respect. The Dutch love the drunken soulful poetry of their Boer cousins.

I've written about this sort of thing on the Italy Logue a couple of times, here and here - and it doesn't help that apparently written Italian is even more flowery than spoken Italian. I think I'll be limited to child-speak in Italian for quite awhile which, while better than nothing, is hardly satisfying to someone who (like Stoo) takes great pleasure in her lingual dexterity. (And I mean that about my use of the English language, not my tongue. Ahem.)

I'll second the recommendation for David Sedaris here - although I highly recommend the audio books. His readings have made me tear up so badly (from laughing) while driving that I was a hazard on the road. And anyone learning a language will completely understand what he goes through. In one bit, he talks about how he was so happy when he graduated from child-speak ("I is feeling good") to hillbilly-speak - when he was at the butcher asking about the calves brains he saw in the case, he said he asked the equivalent of, "Is them the brains of cows?" Yeah. Good stuff.

No matter how many times I told my Italian students, "It doesn't matter, as long as you get your point across, that's all that counts!" I still want more...