Spell It Out: The Curious, Enthralling and Extraordinary Story of English Spelling - Hardcover

Crystal, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1250003474 ISBN 13: 9781250003478

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2013

Synopsis

The fascinating and surprising history of English spelling from David Crystal, everyone's favorite expert logophile

With The Story of English in 100 Words, David Crystal took us on a tour through the history of our language. Now, with Spell It Out, he takes on the task of answering all the questions about how we spell: "Why is English spelling so difficult?" Or "Why are good spellers so proud of their achievement that when they see a misspelling they condemn the writer as sloppy, lazy, or uneducated?" In thirty-seven short, engaging and informative chapters, Crystal takes readers on a history of English spelling, starting with the Roman missionaries' sixth century introduction of the Roman alphabet and ending with where the language might be going. He looks individually at each letter in the alphabet and its origins. He considers the question of vowels and how people developed a way to tell whether or not it was long or short. He looks at influences from other cultures, and explains how English speakers understood that the "o" in "hopping" was a short vowel, rather than the long vowel of "hoping". If you've ever asked yourself questions like "Why do the words "their", "there" and "they're" sound alike, but mean very different things?" or "How can we tell the difference between "charge" the verb and "charge" the noun?" David Crystal's Spell It Out will spell it all out for you.

About this title

About the Author

DAVID CRYSTAL is the author of The Story of English in 100 Words and Honorary Professor of Linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor. In 1995, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire for services to the English language. He lives in the United Kingdom.

Reviews

Crystal makes a compelling case that spelling can be an adventure. This whirlwind review of the history of English spelling contains helpful tips for average readers and teachers, with small gems of discovery every few pages. The development of our language was influenced by everything from efficiency to fashion, such as the sixteenth-century love of Latin spelling. His brisk approach takes about as many chapters as there are English sounds—a bit more than 26—which are the root of several spelling variations. Writers’ knotty and convoluted efforts to bring order to this hodgepodge are often doomed, as the myriad exceptions to “i before e” demonstrate. Although his book is not exactly a love letter to the vagaries of English, linguist Crystal (The Story of English in 100 Words, 2012) maintains an affectionate tone of indulgence, similar to how a doting relative would treat a wayward nephew. For as Crystal shows, spelling is a cultural legacy as human—and therefore as prone to mischief—as anything else we create. --Bridget Thoreson

Edition details

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1250003474
• ISBN 13: 9781250003478
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336