Read Books Online and Download eBooks, EPub, PDF, Mobi, Kindle, Text Full Free.
Globish How English Became The Worlds Language
Download Globish How English Became The Worlds Language full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Globish How English Became The Worlds Language ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
Book Synopsis Globish: How English Became the World's Language by : Robert McCrum
Download or read book Globish: How English Became the World's Language written by Robert McCrum and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-05-09 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses how Anglo-American has become the language of the world, and describes the changes that English has brought to far-away cultures in distant places.
Download or read book Globish written by Robert McCrum and published by Anchor Canada. This book was released on 2011-05-10 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A small island in the North Atlantic, colonized by Rome, then pillaged for hundreds of years by marauding neighbours, becomes the dominant world power in the 19th century. As its power spreads, its language follows. Then, across the Atlantic, a colony of that tiny island grows into the military and cultural colossus of the 20th century. These centuries of empire-building and war, international trade and industrial ingenuity will bring to the world great works of literature and extraordinary movies, cricket pitches and episodes of Dallas, the printing press and the internet. But what happens next is quite unprecedented. While the global dominance of Anglo-American power appears to be on the wane, the English language has acquired an astonishing new life of its own. With a supra-national momentum, it is now able to zoom across time and space at previously unimaginable speeds. In Robert McCrum's analysis, the cultural revolution of our times is the emergence of English, a global phenomenon as never before, to become the world's language. In the 21st century English + Microsoft = Globish. Globish takes us on a riveting and enlightening journey of the spread of a global English, from the icy swamps of pre-Roman Saxony to the shopping malls of Seoul, from the study of 'Crazy English' TM in China to crowds of juvenile wizards mobbing bookshop tills across the world. Along the way it gives new meaning to a faded old brown parchment (the Magna Carta), a 272 word presidential speech (the Gettysburg address) and a scratchy black and white film of a couple of men in space suits.
Book Synopsis English as a Global Language by : David Crystal
Download or read book English as a Global Language written by David Crystal and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-29 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in a detailed and fascinating manner, this book is ideal for general readers interested in the English language.
Book Synopsis Globish: How English Became the World's Language by : Robert McCrum
Download or read book Globish: How English Became the World's Language written by Robert McCrum and published by W. W. Norton. This book was released on 2011-05-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A fascinating study not only of the roots and growth of our own language but of its future.”—Bloomsbury Review It seems impossible: a small island in the North Atlantic, colonized by Rome, then pillaged for hundreds of years by marauding neighbors, becomes the dominant world power in the nineteenth century. In this provocative new look at the course of empire, Robert McCrum shows how the language of the Anglo-American imperium has become the world’s lingua franca. In the twenty-first century, writes the author, English + Microsoft = Globish.
Book Synopsis Globish: How English Became the World's Language by : Robert McCrum
Download or read book Globish: How English Became the World's Language written by Robert McCrum and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2010-05-24 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A fascinating study not only of the roots and growth of our own language but of its future.”—Bloomsbury Review It seems impossible: a small island in the North Atlantic, colonized by Rome, then pillaged for hundreds of years by marauding neighbors, becomes the dominant world power in the nineteenth century. In this provocative new look at the course of empire, Robert McCrum shows how the language of the Anglo-American imperium has become the world’s lingua franca. In the twenty-first century, writes the author, English + Microsoft = Globish.
Book Synopsis The English is Coming! by : Leslie Dunton-Downer
Download or read book The English is Coming! written by Leslie Dunton-Downer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-09-14 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: English has fast become the number one language for everything from business and science, diplomacy and education, entertainment and environmentalism to socializing and beyond—virtually any human activity unfolding on a global scale. Worldwide, nonnative speakers of English now outnumber natives three to one; and in China alone, more people use English than in the United States—a remarkable feat for a language that got its start as a mongrel tongue on an island fifteen hundred years ago. Through the fascinating stories of thirty English words used and understood in nearly all corners of the globe, The English Is Coming! takes readers on an eye-opening journey across culture and commerce, war and peace, and time and space. These mini-histories shed new light on everyday words: the strange turns of fate by which their meanings evolved and their new roles as the building blocks of the first language ever to forge a global community. Exploring such familiar terms as shampoo (from a Hindi word for scalp and body hygiene long practiced in India); robot (coined by Czech painter Josef Capek for his brother Karel’s 1921 play about man-made creatures); credit (rooted in a prehistoric phrase of sacred significance: "to put heart into"); and dozens of others, Dunton-Downer reveals with clarity and humor how these linguistic artifacts embody the resilience, appeal, adoptability, and wild inclusiveness that English, through a series of historical accidents, gained on its road to worldwide reach. These words explain not only how English has managed to link our distant and often disparate pasts but also how it is propelling humankind to a future that we can, for the first time, talk about and shape in a language that now belongs to all of us: Global English. Perfect for culture buffs, armchair travelers, and language lovers alike, The English Is Coming! is sure to inspire truly global conversations for decades to come.
Download or read book Word Myths written by David Wilton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-11-06 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do you "know" that posh comes from an acronym meaning "port out, starboard home"? That "the whole nine yards" comes from (pick one) the length of a WWII gunner's belt; the amount of fabric needed to make a kilt; a sarcastic football expression? That Chicago is called "The Windy City" because of the bloviating habits of its politicians, and not the breeze off the lake? If so, you need this book. David Wilton debunks the most persistently wrong word histories, and gives, to the best of our actual knowledge, the real stories behind these perennially mis-etymologized words. In addition, he explains why these wrong stories are created, disseminated, and persist, even after being corrected time and time again. What makes us cling to these stories, when the truth behind these words and phrases is available, for the most part, at any library or on the Internet? Arranged by chapters, this book avoids a dry A-Z format. Chapters separate misetymologies by kind, including The Perils of Political Correctness (picnics have nothing to do with lynchings), Posh, Phat Pommies (the problems of bacronyming--the desire to make every word into an acronym), and CANOE (which stands for the Conspiracy to Attribute Nautical Origins to Everything). Word Myths corrects long-held and far-flung examples of wrong etymologies, without taking the fun out of etymology itself. It's the best of both worlds: not only do you learn the many wrong stories behind these words, you also learn why and how they are created--and what the real story is.
Download or read book The Prodigal Tongue written by Mark Abley and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2011-04-20 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Prodigal Tongue takes a look at the wild, wacky and sometimes baffling road our language–English and others–is taking in its evolution. Where in the world will it end up?! Mark Abley, author of Spoken Here, has created an entertaining and informative exploration of the way that languages–English, Japanese, French, Arabic and other major tongues–are likely to transform and be transformed by their speakers during the twenty-first century. Grammar and vocabulary are just the beginning; more importantly, this book is about people. In places like Los Angeles, Tokyo, Singapore and Oxford, Abley encounters hip-hop performers and dictionary makers, bloggers and translators, novelists and therapists. He talks to a married couple who were passionately corresponding online before they met in “meatspace.” And he listens to teenagers, puzzling out the words they coin in chatrooms and virtual worlds. Everywhere he goes, he asks what the future is likely to hold for the ways we communicate. Abley balances a traditional concern for honesty and accuracy in language with an untraditional delight in newly minted expressions. Lively, evocative, passionate and playful, this is a book for everyone who cherishes the words we use.
Book Synopsis Twentieth-Century English by : Christian Mair
Download or read book Twentieth-Century English written by Christian Mair and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-10-26 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Standard English has evolved and developed in many ways over the past hundred years. From pronunciation to vocabulary to grammar, this concise survey clearly documents the recent history of Standard English. Drawing on large amounts of authentic corpus data, it shows how we can track ongoing changes to the language, and demonstrates each of the major developments that have taken place. As well as taking insights from a vast body of literature, Christian Mair presents the results of his own cutting-edge research, revealing some important changes which have not been previously documented. He concludes by exploring how social and cultural factors, such as the American influence on British English, have affected Standard English in recent times. Authoritative, informative and engaging, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in language change in progress, particularly those working on English, and will be welcomed by students, researchers and language teachers alike.
Book Synopsis The History of English by : Stephan Gramley
Download or read book The History of English written by Stephan Gramley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The History of English: An Introduction provides a chronological analysis of the linguistic, social, and cultural development of the English language from before its establishment in Britain around the year 450 to the present. Each chapter represents a new stage in the development of the language from Old English through Middle English to Modern Global English, all illustrated with a rich and diverse selection of primary texts showing changes in language resulting from contact, conquest and domination, and the expansion of English around the world. The History of English goes beyond the usual focus on English in the UK and the USA to include the wider global course of the language during and following the Early Modern English period. This perspective therefore also includes a historical review of English in its pidgin and creole varieties and as a native and/or second language in the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and Australasia. Designed to be user-friendly, The History of English contains: chapter introductions and conclusions to assist study over 80 textual examples demonstrating linguistic change, accompanied by translations and/or glosses where appropriate study questions on the social, cultural and linguistic background of the chapter topics further reading from key texts to extend or deepen the focus nearly 100 supporting figures, tables, and maps to illuminate the text 16-pages of colour plates depicting exemplary texts, relevant artefacts, and examples of language usage, including Germanic runes, the opening page of Beowulf, the New England Primer, and the Treaty of Waitangi. The companion website at www.routledge.com/cw/gramley supports the textbook and features: an extended view of major aspects of language development as well as synopses of material dealt with in a range of chapters in the book further sample texts, including examples from Chaucer, numerous Early Modern English texts from a wide variety of fields, and twenty-first-century novels additional exercises to help users expand their insights and apply background knowledge an interactive timeline of important historical events and developments with linked encyclopaedic entries audio clips providing examples of a wide range of accents The History of English is essential reading for any student of the English language.
Download or read book How We Compete written by Suzanne Berger and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2005-12-27 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Impressive... This is an evidence-based bottom-up account of the realities of globalisation. It is more varied, more subtle, and more substantial than many of the popular works available on the subject." -- Financial Times Based on a five-year study by the MIT Industrial Performance Center, How We Compete goes into the trenches of over 500 international companies to discover which practices are succeeding in today’s global economy, which are failing –and why. There is a rising fear in America that no job is safe. In industry after industry, jobs seem to be moving to low-wage countries in Asia, Central America, and Eastern Europe. Production once handled entirely in U.S. factories is now broken into pieces and farmed out to locations around the world. To discover whether our current fears about globalization are justified, Suzanne Berger and a group of MIT researchers went to the front lines, visiting workplaces and factories around the world. They conducted interviews with managers at more than 500 companies, asking questions about which parts of the manufacturing process are carried out in their own plants and which are outsourced, who their biggest competitors are, and how they plan to grow their businesses. How We Compete presents their fascinating, and often surprising, conclusions. Berger and her team examined businesses where technology changes rapidly–such as electronics and software–as well as more traditional sectors, like the automobile industry, clothing, and textile industries. They compared the strategies and success of high-tech companies like Intel and Sony, who manufacture their products in their own plants, and Cisco and Dell, who rely primarily on outsourcing. They looked closely at textile and clothing to uncover why some companies, including the Gap and Liz Claiborne, choose to outsource production to foreign countries, while others, such as Zara and Benetton, base most operations at home. What emerged was far more complicated than the black-and-white picture presented by promoters and opponents of globalization. Contrary to popular belief, cheap labor is not the answer, and the world is not flat, as Thomas Friedman would have it. How We Compete shows that there are many different ways to win in the global economy, and that the avenues open to American companies are much wider than we ever imagined. SUZANNE BERGER is the Raphael Dorman and Helen Starbuck Professor of Political Science at MIT and director of the MIT International Science and Technology Initiative. She was a member of the MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity, whose report Made in America analyzed weaknesses and strengths in U.S. industry in the 1980s. She lives in Boston , Massachusetts.
Book Synopsis Global Intellectual History by : Samuel Moyn
Download or read book Global Intellectual History written by Samuel Moyn and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-25 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where do ideas fit into historical accounts that take an expansive, global view of human movements and events? Teaching scholars of intellectual history to incorporate transnational perspectives into their work, while also recommending how to confront the challenges and controversies that may arise, this original resource explains the concepts, concerns, practice, and promise of "global intellectual history," featuring essays by leading scholars on various approaches that are taking shape across the discipline. The contributors to Global Intellectual History explore the different ways in which one can think about the production, dissemination, and circulation of "global" ideas and ask whether global intellectual history can indeed produce legitimate narratives. They discuss how intellectuals and ideas fit within current conceptions of global frames and processes of globalization and proto-globalization, and they distinguish between ideas of the global and those of the transnational, identifying what each contributes to intellectual history. A crucial guide, this collection sets conceptual coordinates for readers eager to map an emerging area of study.
Download or read book Half a Life written by Darin Strauss and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-05-31 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this powerful, unforgettable memoir, acclaimed novelist Darin Strauss examines the far-reaching consequences of the tragic moment that has shadowed his whole life. In his last month of high school, he was behind the wheel of his dad's Oldsmobile, driving with friends, heading off to play mini-golf. Then: a classmate swerved in front of his car. The collision resulted in her death. With piercing insight and stark prose, Darin Strauss leads us on a deeply personal, immediate, and emotional journey—graduating high school, going away to college, starting his writing career, falling in love with his future wife, becoming a father. Along the way, he takes a hard look at loss and guilt, maturity and accountability, hope and, at last, acceptance. The result is a staggering, uplifting tour de force. Look for special features inside, including an interview with Colum McCann.
Download or read book Napoleon written by Felix Markham and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2016-07-26 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAPOLEON—SOLDIER, EMPEROR, LOVER... This magnificent reconstruction of Napoleon’s life and legend is written by a distinguished Oxford scholar. It is based on newly discovered documents—including the personal letters of Marie-Louise and the decoded diaries of General Bertrand, who accompanied Napoleon to his final exile on St. Helena. It has been hailed as the most important single-volume work in Napoleonic literature. “Mr. Markham’s book is notable...a well-balanced study of a man vastly bigger than his 5 feet 6 inches, who has been for generations one of the most fascinating of subjects for biography.”—Mark S. Watson, Baltimore Evening Sun “A surprisingly sympathetic biography of one of the most fascinating men who ever strutted across the stage of history.”—Dolph Honicker, Nashville Tennesseean “A remarkable achievement. The story moves as fast as one of Bonaparte’s campaigns and is told with the clarity of his dispatches.”—The Economist “A definitive contribution to Napoleonic literature.”—Jose Sanchez, St. Louis Globe Democrat “The university lecturer in History at Oxford has approached the impossible; he has written a new life of one of the most written-about figures in modern history with freshness, vivacity, fine scholarship and penetration.”—James H. Powers, Boston Globe “Markham has achieved a startlingly vivid and coherent picture of Napoleon’s career, of the social and intellectual influences that molded it, and of the men and forces that opposed it. The military events, the political movements, the personal intrigues—all appear, each in its proper place and perspective.”—E. Nelson Hayes, Los Angeles Times “Markham’s erudition is extensive; he makes full use of recent discoveries of manuscript material, and he writes with admirable judgment about a character who has been misjudged consistently by historians.”—J. H. Plumb, The Saturday Review
Download or read book Gilgamesh written by Michael Schmidt and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reflections on a lost poem and its rediscovery by contemporary poets Gilgamesh is the most ancient long poem known to exist. It is also the newest classic in the canon of world literature. Lost for centuries to the sands of the Middle East but found again in the 1850s, it tells the story of a great king, his heroism, and his eventual defeat. It is a story of monsters, gods, and cataclysms, and of intimate friendship and love. Acclaimed literary historian Michael Schmidt provides a unique meditation on the rediscovery of Gilgamesh and its profound influence on poets today. Schmidt describes how the poem is a work in progress even now, an undertaking that has drawn on the talents and obsessions of an unlikely cast of characters, from archaeologists and museum curators to tomb raiders and jihadis. Fragments of the poem, incised on clay tablets, were scattered across a huge expanse of desert when it was recovered in the nineteenth century. The poem had to be reassembled, its languages deciphered. The discovery of a pre-Noah flood story was front-page news on both sides of the Atlantic, and the poem's allure only continues to grow as additional cuneiform tablets come to light. Its translation, interpretation, and integration are ongoing. In this illuminating book, Schmidt discusses the special fascination Gilgamesh holds for contemporary poets, arguing that part of its appeal is its captivating otherness. He reflects on the work of leading poets such as Charles Olson, Louis Zukofsky, and Yusef Komunyakaa, whose own encounters with the poem are revelatory, and he reads its many translations and editions to bring it vividly to life for readers.
Book Synopsis The Ring of Words by : Peter Gilliver
Download or read book The Ring of Words written by Peter Gilliver and published by . This book was released on 2009-07-23 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tolkien's first job, on returning home from World War I, was as an assistant on the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary. He later said that he had "learned more in those two years than in any other equal part of his life." The Ring of Words reveals how his professional work on the OED influenced Tolkien's creative use of language in his fictional world. Here three senior editors of the OED offer an intriguing exploration of Tolkien's career as a lexicographer and illuminate his creativity as a word user and word creator. The centerpiece of the book is a wonderful collection of "word studies" which will delight the heart of Ring fans and word lovers everywhere. The editors look at the origin of such Tolkienesque words as "hobbit," "mithril, "Smeagol," "Ent," "halfling," and "worm" (meaning "dragon"). Readers discover that a word such as "mathom" (anything a hobbit had no immediate use for, but was unwilling to throw away) was actually common in Old English, but that "mithril," on the other hand, is a complete invention (and the first "Elven" word to have an entry in the OED). And fans of Harry Potter will be surprised to find that "Dumbledore" (the name of Hogwart's headmaster) was a word used by Tolkien and many others (it is a dialect word meaning "bumblebee"). Few novelists have found so much of their creative inspiration in the shapes and histories of words. Presenting archival material not found anywhere else, The Ring of Words offers a fresh and unexplored angle on the literary achievements of one of the world's most famous and best-loved writers.
Book Synopsis Is That a Fish in Your Ear? by : David Bellos
Download or read book Is That a Fish in Your Ear? written by David Bellos and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year People speak different languages, and always have. The Ancient Greeks took no notice of anything unless it was said in Greek; the Romans made everyone speak Latin; and in India, people learned their neighbors' languages—as did many ordinary Europeans in times past (Christopher Columbus knew Italian, Portuguese, and Castilian Spanish as well as the classical languages). But today, we all use translation to cope with the diversity of languages. Without translation there would be no world news, not much of a reading list in any subject at college, no repair manuals for cars or planes; we wouldn't even be able to put together flat-pack furniture. Is That a Fish in Your Ear? ranges across the whole of human experience, from foreign films to philosophy, to show why translation is at the heart of what we do and who we are. Among many other things, David Bellos asks: What's the difference between translating unprepared natural speech and translating Madame Bovary? How do you translate a joke? What's the difference between a native tongue and a learned one? Can you translate between any pair of languages, or only between some? What really goes on when world leaders speak at the UN? Can machines ever replace human translators, and if not, why? But the biggest question Bellos asks is this: How do we ever really know that we've understood what anybody else says—in our own language or in another? Surprising, witty, and written with great joie de vivre, this book is all about how we comprehend other people and shows us how, ultimately, translation is another name for the human condition.
