Product Description

In this fascinating survey of everything from how sounds become speech to how names work, David Crystal answers every question you might ever have had about the nuts and bolts of language in his usual highly illuminating way. Along the way we find out about eyebrow flashes, whistling languages, how parents teach their children to speak, how politeness travels across languages and how the way we talk show not just how old we are but where we’re from and even who we want to be.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45925 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

About the Author
David Crystal is Honorary Professor of Linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor. He has published over ninety books, most recently The Stories of English, and is the editor of The Penguin Encyclopaedia. In 1995, he was awarded the OBE for services to the English language. He lives in Holyhead, Anglesey.

Customer Reviews

Good All Rounder
This book provides easy going summaries of everything to do with language. Students of linguistics will find it useful as it contains a background to all the usual things included in a linguistics degree from phonology to the origins of language. Invaluable.

What is the point of this book?
Anyone expecting to find what the blurb says on this book is in for a big disappointment. There is nothing new, no opinions to chew over just a very rushed synopsis of everything that has to do with language. Anyone who has reached adulthood will know 90% of what this book contains anyway. A good 20% of the book is made up of a listing of world languages - no interesting detail just a listing.

Professor Crystal also holds the very odd view that language evolved 30,000 years ago some 30,000 years after man reached Australia. So how did that happen?