THE ADVENTURE OF ENGLISH

Critics

• The subtle and ruthless survivor

  The Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg 354 pp, Hodder & Stoughton, £20 In a list of the 100 most commonly used words in English, reproduced early in this book, the first noun comes at number 30. It is "word". This tells you something about how much ... (read full critics)

  guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

• A continuation of empire by other means

  Melvyn Bragg’s superb new history of the English language is told as an adventure story, and rightly so. Brought to the British Isles in the 5th century AD by Germanic warriors, ‘this hungry creature, English, demanded more and more subjects’, until ... (read full critics)

  spectator published on Fri, 17 Sep 2010

1 Review

• 1 person find this helpful

  

  Fascinating! It is truly a biography of the English language, tracing it from its first beginnings, through invasions that threatened to end the language, to modern-day English. It is very detailed, with more examples than the ordinary reader probably needs or wants, but you can always skip over som ... (continue)

  Fascinating! It is truly a biography of the English language, tracing it from its first beginnings, through invasions that threatened to end the language, to modern-day English. It is very detailed, with more examples than the ordinary reader probably needs or wants, but you can always skip over some of the examples.

  It will take me forever to finish, as I need to read it slowly to take it all in. Plus I'll probably read dozens of fiction books while still reading this one. I am savoring it. It's fantastic!

  p.s...It took a year to read, what with all the other books I read inbetween, but this is one I will re-read someday.

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  Missmath144 said on Nov 7, 2008 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

Book Details

• Rating:
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• English Books
• Paperback
• ISBN-10: 0340834277
• ISBN-13: 9780340834275
• Publisher: HODDER & STOUGHTON
• Pub date: Jan 01, 2004
• Dimensions: 1226 mm x 839 mm x 258 mm Just how big is that?
• Also available as: Hardcover, Audio CD, Audio Cassette, Others and eBook

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