The Story of English in 100 Words by David Crystal

 

The Story of English in 100 Words by David Crystal is my first read during the month of August! I listened to the unabridged audio version of this nonfiction book, which is nicely narrated by the author.

If you are a lover of words, linguistics, and etymology, then I think you'll love this book. The introduction is wonderful as it sets the tone of this nonfiction book. I love the short chapters that focus on a single word in the English language and how it influenced other words and cultural associations. There were plenty of surprising words that made up the list of words in this book. This is a fun read!!

Below is the publisher's summary for The Story of English in 100 Words by David Crystal found on Amazon's website:

The world's foremost expert on the English language takes us on an entertaining and eye-opening tour of the history of our vernacular through the ages.

In The Story of English in 100 Words, an entertaining history of the world's most ubiquitous language, David Crystal draws on one hundred words that best illustrate the huge variety of sources, influences and events that have helped to shape our vernacular since the first definitively English word―‘roe'―was written down on the femur of a roe deer in the fifth century. Featuring ancient words (‘loaf'), cutting edge terms that relfect our world (‘twittersphere'), indispensible words that shape our tongue (‘and', ‘what'), fanciful words (‘fopdoodle') and even obscene expressions (the "c word"...), David Crystal takes readers on a tour of the winding byways of our language via the rude, the obscure and the downright surprising.

I am giving The Story of English in 100 Words by David Crystal a rating of 4 stars out of 5 stars.

Until my next post, happy reading!!