To learn the history of the English language, I had to take an entire 15-week university course. (And read Baugh’s book shown in the photo here.) But you can get the big picture in an entertaining — if not entirely vetted by experts — way in only 10 minutes.
Enjoy getting fit!
If you need evidence that people feel passionately about language, check out a plain language summary of research published by Kate Burridge, Professor of Linguistics at Monash University in Australia. The summary appeared today in the Linguistics Research Digest, a terrific resource for locating more than platitudes about communication. Their goal is “to provide up-to-date reports on the…
For the funny explanation of appropriate usage, see College Humor. You can even download them as truetype fonts for actual adoption. It’s worth a few minutes! Happy Friday!
Today is filled with tasks related to my day job — AGAIN. So I’m sharing a quick (and dirty) punctuation lesson in honor of my friend, Charles White. Chas and I are both nerdy enough to be fans of the Oxford comma. The illustration is a slightly edited version of the original by Jeff Bishop. (I’m trying…
In case any of you are wondering where the phrase originated today . . .
If you’re entertained by invented languages, you’ll enjoy this podcast from The World in Words. It lists both old and new novels which include an invented language. Plus a weather report in Elvish for Tolkien fans. Enjoy! Related articles New Zealand Weatherman Gives Forecast in Elvish (VIDEO) (blippitt.com) Auden and Elvish (newyorker.com)
TEDEd brings us short lessons on many subjects. There are currently eight lessons in the TEDEd Playing with Language series. That’s where I found one called How did English Evolve that explains why some words are less “plain” than others. So I flipped it to create my own lesson related to plain language. (It’s a very simple process.)…
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Thanks for stopping by my site and for the kind words. I stumbled upon your site after reading the grammar blog post this week on WordPress. Professionally, I am a writer/editor, and I thought your analysis about how to teach writing was spot-on. Somewhere between journalism (my undergrad major) and good literature, there lies the elusive intersection of art and science that makes clear prose.
Btw, I thoroughly enjoyed this short video as it made me LOL several times. What DID happen to the Jutes, anyway? 😉
I appreciate hearing from folks — especially the ones who agree with me! I’m not sure why the Jutes’ name didn’t take on the same level of importance as the Angles’ and Saxons’ did. I think they might have appeared first — as mercenaries from modern-day Denmark. Maybe there were too few of them. Or maybe they more successfully integrated with other tribes. I’ve read that their most famous leaders, Hengist and Horsa, were actually Angles. Interesting stuff!