A passionate defense (or is it defence?) of the “fantastically flexible medium” that is English.
What is it about Americans’ way with words that makes Brits so angry? An American linguistics professor attempts to find out.
Murphy (Linguistics/Univ. of Sussex), who lives in Britain and writes the blog Separated by a Common Language, hears frequent complaints “about the wrecking ball that is American English.” In this book, she tries to understand how it became “Linguistic Public Enemy Number 1” and explains the phenomenon she calls amerilexicosis, “a pathologically unhinged reaction to American English.” As the author notes, many American phrases that proponents of British English detest come from Britain. The earliest uses of “might of,” considered an American monstrosity, “have been found in letters sent in England in the 1770s.” Murphy covers all the greatest linguistic hits—e.g., the -or/-our divide in words like “color”—but she tends to generalize: not every American or Brit speaks as she describes. Some of her examples, even in the service of legitimate points, leave room for debate. The author defends the supposedly American practice of turning nouns into verbs by writing, “people are tasked with doing things because that’s shorter than giving someone the task of doing something.” One might respectfully argue that “he asked me to clean my room” is shorter and better than “I’ve been tasked with cleaning my room.” But perhaps that speaks to Murphy’s thesis: English is full of inconsistencies and pitfalls, and no single set of standards is necessarily superior. This is an entertaining work that defends English’s so-called Americanization, and the author has a delightfully sardonic style, as when she tells Brits, “Americans call your football soccer because you taught them to….Soccer came from the full name of the game, association football. The word comes from England. You should be proud of it. There, that feels better.”
A passionate defense (or is it defence?) of the “fantastically flexible medium” that is English.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-14-313110-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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