A Modest Construct

Posts tagged `history`

¶ Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter: Publisher: Gotham; Year: 2008; Pages: 256

One of the benefits of being an armchair linguist is that I have absolutely no qualms about veering from, say, Baugh and Cable’s A History of the English Language or the nominally rebellious but practically canonical works of David Crystal to less academic but infinitely more pleasurable works of dedicated amateurs like Bill Bryson. Our Magnificant Bastard Tongue falls into the latter category (though McWhorter sometimes resembles Crystal in tone), not only because McWhorter is a sort of nuovo-linguist, the sort who would wear sneakers before tweed jackets, but also because this particular book was intended to be a shorter and more information introduction to McWhorter’s sphere… essentially a 250-page brochure for modern linguistics.

§7027 · April 30, 2011 · (No comments) · Tags: Book Reviews, books, etymology, history, linguistics, nonfiction, reviews

¶ The Book Thief

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak: Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf; Year: 2006/2007; Pages: 576

The Book Thief, along with its armful of literary awards, is technically a book for young adults, though, like the best young adult books (see John Green’s œuvre, which includes An Abundance of Katherines), it is really written for adults both young and old. The label may stem in part from the fact that its main character is a young girl; for some reason, stories written about children tend to be immediately dismissed as being written for children as well.

It is also, let us admit, yet another entry about the Holocaust into a very crowded market; more to the point, there are many memorable books about the Holocaust we already have. What new quality does The Book Thief give us?

§6973 · March 7, 2011 · (No comments) · Tags: Book Reviews, books, fiction, history, reviews

¶ Hunting Evil

Hunting Evil by Guy Walters: Publisher: Broadway; Year: 2010; Pages: 528

It has been more than a half-century since the Nazi rise to power; in that time, the Nazi ideology, its adherents, and its titular leader, Adolph Hitler, have come to be known in a stylized, somewhat exaggerated way. This is not to say that such opprobrium is any way undeserved; while the Nazis may not have been the most imaginatively cruel men to have murdered in the 20th century (regimes such as Pol Pot come to mind), the sheer scale and enthusiasm of their extermination of more than six million noncombatants has made them the favorite secular devil of the popular mind. Hence things like Godwin’s Law and the constant comparisons of George W. Bush and Barack Obama to Hitler (the former because, I suppose, he’s apparently a warmonger? and the latter because he apparently wants to gas your grandmother).

Needless to say, Nazis hold a certain place in the popular imagination, and for much of the civilized world, we desire nothing more than the application of justice to the outstanding iniquity of the Holocaust. That’s why figures such as Simon Wiesenthal, the famous Nazi-hunter, are so revered, and why books about the topic sell so well.

§6117 · November 15, 2010 · (No comments) · Tags: Book Reviews, books, history, nonfiction, reviews

¶ The Stories of English

The Stories of English by David Crystal: Publisher: Overlook; Year: 2009; Pages: 608

Studying linguistics and etymology is something of a hobby of mine; I’ve read Baugh’s A History of the English Language, which is a more formal academic work, as well as books which would count as, I suppose, “pop linguistics” or “pop etymology”: Bryson’s Made in America and The Mother Tongue; Hitching’s The Secret Life of Words; John Mann’s excellent informal history of the alphabet, Alpha Beta; and probably others which don’t immediately spring to mind.

In the canon of linguistics/etymology books written for a general audience, there is perhaps no figure more formidable than David Crystal; he’s written more than a hundred books, most of which are related to language in some capacity. A whole-hearted descriptivist, he’s a sort of anti-William Safire, accepting that that Prescriptivism is a lot like the Empire: “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers. ”

§6041 · November 12, 2010 · (No comments) · Tags: Book Reviews, books, history, linguistics, nonfiction, reviews

¶ Wednesday’s Word: kitchen

kitchen: n. A room or area for preparing food.

A coworker mused aloud just the other day, “Why is it we have bedroom, dining room, living room, bathroom and….. kitchen.”

Why indeed? Of course, we are simplifying things a bit too much, excluding even current room names like basement, foyer, and office, and more archaic room names like boudoir, parlor, and study. But nonetheless, why the preponderance of -rooms and the rather unique “kitchen” in our modern household terminology?

§5994 · September 29, 2010 · (No comments) · Tags: etymology, history, linguistics, Wednesday's Word