The Adventure Of English: The Biography Of A Language (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
It's been a long time since I enjoyed a book this much. I was already pretty familiar with the author from the BBC podcast, In Our Time. I've long been impressed by Bragg's ability to discuss a wide variety of topics with intelligence spanning humanities, social sciences, history, math and natural sciences, but I hadn't noticed until recently that he is an author and most of his books seems to be on topics surrounding the English language.Bragg traces the development of English from a minor Germanic dialect crossing the ocean in the fifth century through modern day. He looks at wide-ranging influences on the language and influences that it has had on our lives and history.The book was extremely thought-provoking. For instance, one of my long-standing internal conflicts concerns the fixing of linguistic forms such as grammar, word usage, etc.On one hand, I feel deeply that language can be used well or poorly. Distinctions of usage, grammar and pronunciation matter to me and seem objective rather than arbitrary. I don't mean this in the sense that Chomsky does -- I have no opinion about inborn distinctions. Instead I mean that language is used to describe the world, and that strict adherence to linguistic rules provides sharper-edged distinctions both in thought and communication.On the other hand, I appreciate the modern, popular view that language ought to be just what it is, and that the task of grammar, etc., is to describe how people use language rather than to prescribe it. It is rather arbitrary after all to declare the pinnacle of language usage to be how educated folk of your grandparent's generation spoke. Further, I delight in dialects and accents. I play with neologism. I speak differently in different contexts and break rules as often as follow them.There is a deep contradiction here and I've known it for a long time. It is easy to invent sophistries to reconcile these positions, but I've been more comfortable to just recognize it as a mistake and one that I can't immediately correct. With that, I go on cheerfully cringing, though I've for many years felt it was rude to comment, when people saddle et cetera with a 'k' sound. I think about that vs. which as the distinction still is not automatic for me. I beat out of myself the Pittsburgh-born tendency to be discourteous to participles paired with need, want or like, as in "The floor needs cleaned." or "The dog wants fed," even though those don't even sound wrong to me. At the same time, I was delighted when a fellow Yinzer, earlier today, unselfconsciously started a line in an instant message with, "If I'm not being too nebby..."Tracing the entire life of English with this book caused me to think deeply about the dynamic, evolving nature of the language. It has made me more comfortable with change. It becomes more difficult to be stuffy about not accepting "made up" words hearing the rants of those decades or centuries past offering tirades against words I accept as not only standard but as excellent. It is hard to look down upon pronunciation of ask like aks in contemplating that it is the form similar to old English. Well, I'll probably still look down on it, but without the comfort of being able to do because it is bastardization of proper usage. I guess that's central to what I'm losing -- that sense of propriety.It isn't all loss, or even mostly so. This book inspires replacing claims of correctness with a desire to use language beautifully. Whether mining value from classical constructions or inventing, striving for precision or expressiveness, speaking or writing, The Adventure of English inspires a deeper and move loving relationship with the language. It also lends courage to use language as a source of identity. It's remarkable how often that's been central to its role throughout its history! I can delight in nebby and reject aks as part of identification with a certain culture. I can use which and that on the basis of providing a legitimate sharper edge to thought and reject "He be sleeping on the couch" just as readily though it provides an aspect of the verb not as easily or elegantly achieved otherwise (in indicating that it he frequently or habitually sleeps...) despite its utility, on the basis of it breaking with my notion of linguistic identity rather than some claim to its being wrong.More than anything else, the book is exciting and interesting. It is a heap big task to take on writing an adventure story about the evolution of a language. I think Bragg did an excellent job.I know... tl;dr. ;-)
When reading this review, please bear in mind that I have a doctorate in Linguistics with a specialty in history of English and sociolinguistics (also schizophrenic speech--which may be relevant here if Bragg is as delusional as he sounds).Bragg says that Anglo Saxon intended to become the most dominant language in the world. Of course, Anglo Saxon was a Germanic dialect in the 7th century, a declined language and totally unrecognizable as English unless one is taught it by a trained scholar. In any event, languages don't have intentions, are neither weak or strong, ambitious or lazy. They don't bide their time or loot treasures from other languages, as he claims Early Middle English did from Norman French.It's because Anglo Saxon was willing to take in words from other languages that made it grow. Bragg also says that it permitted new words to be made up. Let me get this straight, Mr. Bragg. Pray tell me how a language tells a speaker to feel free to coin a word?Bragg's "biography" of English pictures its speakers as being in the grip of a language which dictates what its speakers do and don't do. This is arrant nonsense. Individual speakers and social groupings within a community decide how to use language and what they deem "correct"All languages are constructed so that new words can be invented.. There are unused sound combinations in every language. Bleestuk, strimet, goojimat: they all could become new words in English, but "mbwonu" couldn't although it could be in Swahili.All languages can also make up new words by compounding words already in their vocabularies: hairbrush, hairdryer, bedspread, lifelong. All languages can borrow words from othet languages and, when they do, they change the sounds to fit their phonetic rules. When the Japanese borrowed "baseball" from American, they pronounced it "basuhboru"All languages can make up new words by taking morphemes, the smallest unit of language with meaning or grammar function, and combining them, like "telephone, television, uncomfortable, unbelievable."One final point: England didn't become French speaking after 1066 because only a few French noblemen settled in England, along with their chefs. Except for a few storekeepers, no other French speakers moved in, so there was no way ordinary English speakers could have learned French even if tbey wanted to. It had nothing to do with the strength of English. It had everything to do with the social situation in the British Isles.
What do You think about The Adventure Of English: The Biography Of A Language (2006)?
Any user of the English language really owes it to themselves, at some point in their lives, to listen carefully to this!It's also available in book form, which I've never read, and was adapted into a multipart TV series for the BBC (also presented in the past on the History International channel).Melvyn Bragg, being also a well-known TV presenter in the UK, presented the TV adaptation himself, and lends much richness to it. For the audio CD version, Robert Powell delivered an unabridged presentation, and his UK-English tone lends that uniquely British authority and listen-ability.Having no experience with the print form of Bragg's work, I may write from ignorance here, but it seems to me that on a subject that deals so intimately with the evolution of language, it's sound and pronunciation, inflections of dialects, etc.: you simply must work from a version which can be heard audibly. Text on a page of the early and archaic forms which English took, give you no idea for how the language sounded to its users of those times.If you are short on time, I recommend seeking out the BBC/History International multipart TV series. You get a well edited abridgement of the work, with on-screen text presentation of key ideas as well as richly articulated spoken language examples, and a top-notch presentation from Bragg himself.If you've more time, dig into the unabridged audiobook version. Robert Powell gives a superb reading, and it'll last you about 1500 miles by car.As for the book, well if you're doing the audiobook version, the book would likely make a useful reference to see the language's evolution in written form. I, however, worked from a combination of the TV series and the audiobook and am satisfied.Once absorbed, you come to understand how most of us are mere base tinkerers with this vast, expressive, adaptable, irrepressible, powerful: English.
—Andrew Skretvedt
A delightful, erudite and informative read, even though I happened to spend a whole term studying the history of the English language before. It discusses English of the British Isles with a special place for Welsh and Scottish varieties, of America, Wild West, India, West Indies and Australia. A wonderful book to be read many times, with the following conclusion: ‘An adventure should have an ending but there is no conclusion to the astounding and moving journey of the English language, from its small spring to rivers of thought and poetry and science, into oceans of religions and politics, industry and finance and technology, those oceans swept by storms that poured English on to the willing and unwilling alike. It is a language that other languages take on, bend, adapt and grow from, just as English itself from its slow fierce forging in these islands has taken on and been tested by and absorbed many languages. Still it grows.’
—Mag
Heard this book being reviewed on Triple R and the reviewer raved about how thrilling this read is... she is right. Chock full of facts, jam-packed with information, covering such different fields as History, Linguistics, Literature (this tour of the langauge through Literature is fantastic in itself), Etymology etc etc etc.For me, a rare consumer of this sort of non-fiction I found I read 1-2 chapters at a time as I needed to digest the amount and range of information.Bragg writes in a conversational style and it's like reading a fiction novel and often a sense of who he is comes through but unlike a biography it doesn't take away from what he is talking about and it is not intrusive.I likey this book and I reckon is a good thing
—Ness
