I recommend almost anything by David Crystal. He wrote some of the text books I had to read when I was doing linguistics, but he has also written many much more accessible books.
Steven Pinker is also pretty good and I really enjoyed Empires of the Word, by Nicholas Ostler, who is very anti-Pinker in some areas, so some interesting differences. B > On 18 Apr 2015, at 15:06, Darren Addy <[email protected]> wrote: > > For those interested in the history of the english language (without > getting into a dry ivory tower program) I highly recommend the books: > "The Mother Tongue (English and How it Got that Way)" by Bill Bryson > and "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English" by > John McWhorter. Entertaining and educational. > >> On Sat, Apr 18, 2015 at 6:37 AM, Henk Terhell <[email protected]> wrote: >> Here a good overview of the variety of Germanic languages: >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8LxRfdLrlU >> Proofs how difficult it is to understand each language within such a small >> area. Even Frisian for the Dutch is almost impossible without prior >> knowledge. >> >> Henk >> >> >> Bob W-PDML schreef op 18-4-2015 om 09:32: >> >>> where. Here's Eddie Izzard talking Old English to a Friesian farmer: >>> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OeC1yAaWG34 Not entirely sure that he's proved >>> his point, but of course Friesian has changed in the centuries since it and >>> OE separated. I've had similar conversations in Italy and Romania just by >>> making something up out of bits of Latin, French and Spanish. That's why my >>> herd of cattle is so multinational. B >> >> >> >> -- >> PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List >> [email protected] >> http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net >> to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and >> follow the directions. > > > > -- > Life is too short to put up with bad bokeh. > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
