The English Language: A Guided Tour of the Language Book

The English language stretches around the world - from Australia to Zimbabwe over 300 million people speak it as their mother tongue alone. And yet despite its astonishingly widespread use as a medium of communication every profession and every province - indeed every individual person - uses a slightly different variant. In this guided tour David Crystal describes the common structures that unify the language and outlines the major variations that separate the English of Britain America Ireland Australia the Caribbean and other parts of the world. He explores the "dialects" of chemists and the clergy lawyers and truckers poets and punsters and offers a survey of how our language developed from Caedmon to computerese.

The English Language : Paperback : Penguin Books Ltd : 9780141003962 : 0141003960 : 01 Jan 2005 : Provides a survey of the English language in its various forms. This book describes the structure of the language, the uses of English throughout the world and provides a history of English. It includes a chapter on 'The effect of technology' on the English language.