Bierma got this question:

"Can you recommend 1 or 2 good books on the history of the English language?" I am wondering what some of you think of his recommendations...I was especially struck by 1 of them.

1) He says the best general introduction is "The Story of English," published in 1986 by BBC books and re-released in 2002 by Penguin.

2) Next..."The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got that Way" along with "Made in America," both by Bryson.

For a general overview, he then suggests: "...most of the top 20 Web sites that turn up in a Google search for the phrase 'history of the English language...."

For the more "fascinated:"

1) Crystal's "The Stories of English"

2) Bragg's "The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language"

3) Mugglestone's "The Oxford History of Language"

4) Blackwell Publishing's "The Handbook of the History of English" (hardly what I'd call at handbook at $165 and with 655 pages!)

Thoughts? How did he do?

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
Bierma got this question:

1) He says the best general introduction is "The Story of English," published in 1986 by BBC books and re-released in 2002 by Penguin.

Got it.

quote:

2) Next..."The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got that Way" along with "Made in America," both by Bryson.

Got both.

quote:

1) Crystal's "The Stories of English"

Got it

quote:

2) Bragg's "The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language"

Got it.

quote:

3) Mugglestone's "The Oxford History of Language"

4) Blackwell Publishing's "The Handbook of the History of English" (hardly what I'd call at handbook at $165 and with 655 pages!)

Don't know either of these.

quote:

Thoughts? How did he do?

On the whole I'd say pretty well. Odd that he's missed out the two Crystal Encyclopedias (of English and of Language)

All the ones I've said I have, have good and bad points. The Bryson are entertaining but not necessarilly to be relied on for 100% accuracy. The Crystal is interesting but more from a historical point of view.

The BBC one and the Bragg both suffer a little from being books written to accompany TV series.

All of them are worth reading though.

I agree largely with Bob. Dr Crystal's work is rather more scholarly than Bryson's. Whereas the latter contains several errors of both omission and commission, the former is less entertaining from the layperson's point of view. I probably enjoyed reading Bryson more, but learnt more real facts from Crystal.

I'm afraid I'm prejudiced against Bragg since I can't stand his manner and I found the two novels of his that I tried to read rather boring so I haven't read him on English. I've not come across the BBC book and although I've heard of Mugglestone I've not read anything by him. I've not heard of the Blackwell Publishing book either.