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- The Stories of English
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- Author: David Crystal
- Reviewer: Sonali T. Sikchi
- Publisher: Overlook Press, New York
- Format: Adult, Nonfiction, Hardcover, 584 Pages, 2004, $35
- ISBN: 1585676012
- Rating: * * * * Quills
- www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/1585676012/scriquil
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- The Stories of English should ideally be a textbook for the "History of the English Language 101" course. However, Crystal's superbly crafted and meticulously researched tome makes complex linguistic theory readily accessible even to the armchair enthusiast through masterful storytelling. Interwoven through the evolution of Modern English is the history of the dialects of the world.
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- The standard history of the English language starts with the arrival of the Germanic tribes and proceeds along predictable Anglo-Saxon rails: Old English, the Norman influence leading to Middle English, the Renaissance leading to Early Modern English, the discovery of printing leading to dictionaries and further standardization and eventually to the emergence of Modern English by 1800. This is the story of only one kind of English and only in England -- Standard English -- and even that ignores early Celtic and later East Indian influences, to name two.
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- However, as Crystal points out, there are three observable problems with this history: most English speakers don't speak Standard English, a significant number of writers don't write it and it is not used in a large percentage of online interactions. Regional, socio-cultural and ethnic dialects and accents reveal the true linguistic history, as does the study of language patterns in say, the Caribbean, South Africa, the United States, India, etc.
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- Most people are taught Standard English in school and tend to use it in most formal settings. However, they also have command over different informal styles of speech; for example, at lunch with work colleagues, at a party of high school buddies, at a gathering of parents, your child's friends and their parents, etc. No historical account of English can or should ignore the entire gamut of the language's formality range.
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- Crystal's history of English starts with the existing Celtic and Pictish languages in Britain before the arrival of the Romans. Old English emerged as a polyglot of the Celtic Roman, Germanic and Nordic Viking tongues, not to mention some Frankish and Frisian influences thrown in by traders. Even as Old English was coming into its own as a language, lexical diversity was already present depending upon who spoke it: a Dane, an Anglo or a Saxon.
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- And so the story goes on to the tales of a trilingual nation (English, French and Latin) in the High and Late Middle Ages that led to the emergence of Middle English. The first written record of dialect is in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," where Chaucer uses dialect to express character. This period also sees the start of linguistic discourse and dialect groupings by occupation, social structure, regional location, etc. These dialects were also readily reflected in the written language, because the language in those times had not yet become prescriptive.
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- During the Renaissance, the London and Oxbridge triangle of power and influence was instrumental in creating the early Modern English (Midlands dialect). However, the process was haphazard at best; there was no academics or standards body. The printing press and printed material, such as the Bible, literature and early dictionaries greatly aided this process. The chancery with its complex judiciary was also a primary influence on defining Early Modern English.
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- By Shakespearean times, English was a rich language with thousands of words, and all writing (formal or otherwise) was conducted in Early Modern English. Writers then began devising new literary forms, inventing new words and using old words in new senses, thus, contributing greatly to the lexical expansion.
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- The age of colonization and the industrial revolution saw the incursion of words from the following languages into English: Greek, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, AmeriIndian languages, Middle Eastern languages (such as Turkish, Hebrew and Persian), East Indian languages (such as Hindi, Tamil, etc.) and other Asian languages (such as Tibetan, Malay, Chinese and Japanese).
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- Johnson's dictionary as well as the later Bibles were instrumental in shepherding in Modern English, and that transition happened from 1700 to 1800.
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- "Early [medieval] manuscripts had no punctuation marks or even spaces between words." However, ever since punctuation marks were introduced as oratory guides, the Lynne Trusses through the ages have whinged and argued about their usages.
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- And to all the readers who run away in horror from split infinitives, and consider them a transgression of the computer age, Crystal has a little snippet from the anthology of "Punch" magazine, titled "Mr. Punch in Society" (c.1870) that shows that Victorians, too, shuddered from them while their writers just as cheerfully employed them.
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- The Stories of English is a groundbreaking history of the language in a compelling narrative of a truly global adventure. For the first time, regional speech and writing command center stage. With examples from Bede's "Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation" (8th century) to "Lord of the Rings," David Crystal underscores his theories and conclusions.
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