Book picks similar to
Language Death by David Crystal
linguistics
language
non-fiction
nonfiction
A Glossary of Literary Terms
M.H. Abrams - 1957
A Glossary of Literary Terms covers the terminology of literature - from literary history to theory to criticism - making it a valuable addition to any literary theory or literature course.
The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations: The Complete Opinionated Guide for the Careful Speaker
Charles Harrington Elster - 1999
As Elster points out, there is no sewer in connoisseur, no dip in diphthong, and no pronoun in pronunciation. The culmination of twenty years of observation and study, The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations is more than just a pronunciation guide. Elster discusses past and present usage, alternatives, analogies, and tendencies and offers plenty of advice, none of it objective. Whether you are adamant or ambivalent about the spoken word, Elster arms you with the information you need to decide what is acceptable for you.The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations has now been expanded and revised and features nearly 200 new words, including:al-Qaeda bruschetta commensurate coup de grâce curriculum vita exacerbate gigabyte hara-kiri machismo Muslim Niger Pinochet Pulitzer sorbet tinnitus w (as in www-dot)and many, many more.Charles Harrington Elster is the pronunciation editor of Black’s Law Dictionary and the author of various books about language, including Verbal Advantage, There’s a Word for It, and What in the Word? He has been a guest columnist on language for the Boston Globe and the New York Times Magazine and a commentator on NPR and hundreds of radio shows around the country.
The Chicago Manual of Style
University of Chicago Press - 1906
That sheet grew into a pamphlet, and the pamphlet grew into a book—the first edition of the Manual of Style, published in 1906. Now in its fifteenth edition, The Chicago Manual of Style—the essential reference for authors, editors, proofreaders, indexers, copywriters, designers, and publishers in any field—is more comprehensive and easier to use than ever before.Those who work with words know how dramatically publishing has changed in the past decade, with technology now informing and influencing every stage of the writing and publishing process. In creating the fifteenth edition of the Manual, Chicago's renowned editorial staff drew on direct experience of these changes, as well as on the recommendations of the Manual's first advisory board, composed of a distinguished group of scholars, authors, and professionals from a wide range of publishing and business environments.Every aspect of coverage has been examined and brought up to date—from publishing formats to editorial style and method, from documentation of electronic sources to book design and production, and everything in between. In addition to books, the Manual now also treats journals and electronic publications. All chapters are written for the electronic age, with advice on how to prepare and edit manuscripts online, handle copyright and permissions issues raised by technology, use new methods of preparing mathematical copy, and cite electronic and online sources.A new chapter covers American English grammar and usage, outlining the grammatical structure of English, showing how to put words and phrases together to achieve clarity, and identifying common errors. The two chapters on documentation have been reorganized and updated: the first now describes the two main systems preferred by Chicago, and the second discusses specific elements and subject matter, with examples of both systems. Coverage of design and manufacturing has been streamlined to reflect what writers and editors need to know about current procedures. And, to make it easier to search for information, each numbered paragraph throughout the Manual is now introduced by a descriptive heading.Clear, concise, and replete with commonsense advice, The Chicago Manual of Style, fifteenth edition, offers the wisdom of a hundred years of editorial practice while including a wealth of new topics and updated perspectives. For anyone who works with words, whether on a page or computer screen, this continues to be the one reference book you simply must have.What's new in the Fifteenth Edition:* Updated material throughout to reflect current style, technology, and professional practice* Scope expanded to include journals and electronic publications* Comprehensive new chapter on American English grammar and usage by Bryan A. Garner (author of A Dictionary of Modern American Usage)* Updated and rewritten chapter on preparing mathematical copy* Reorganized and updated chapters on documentation, including guidance on citing electronic sources* Streamlined coverage of current design and production processes, with a glossary of key terms* Descriptive headings on all numbered paragraphs for ease of reference* New diagrams of the editing and production processes for both books and journals, keyed to chapter discussions* New, expanded Web site with special tools and features for Manual users at www.chicagomanualofstyle.org.
Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World
Nataly Kelly - 2012
It’s everywhere we look, but seldom seen—until now. Found in Translation reveals the surprising and complex ways that translation shapes the world. Covering everything from holy books to hurricane warnings and poetry to peace treaties, Nataly Kelly and Jost Zetzsche offer language lovers and pop culture fans alike an insider’s view of the ways in which translation spreads culture, fuels the global economy, prevents wars, and stops the outbreak of disease. Examples include how translation plays a key role at Google, Facebook, NASA, the United Nations, the Olympics, and more.
How to Learn Any Language: Quickly, Easily, Inexpensively, Enjoyably and on Your Own
Barry Farber - 1991
The techniques he presents in "How to Learn Any Language" will have you speaking, reading, writing and enjoying any foreign language you want to learn - or have to learn - in a surprisingly short time.Without beating your head against verb conjugations or noun declensions, you can follow Farber's principles and glide toward proficiency in your chosen language. His method consist of four ground-breaking but simple concepts hailed by language-teaching professionals:
Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure and Preposterous Words
Josefa Heifetz Byrne - 1960
A supplemental reference provides an offbeat source of unusual, obscure, and very legitimate English language terms, clearly and whimsically defined for the benefit of those needing "just the right word."
The Loom of Language: An Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages
Frederick Bodmer - 1943
It shows, through basic vocabularies, family resemblances of languages—Teutonic, Romance, Greek—helpful tricks of translation, key combinations of roots and phonetic patterns. It presents by common-sense methods the most helpful approach to the mastery of many languages; it condenses vocabulary to a minimum of essential words; it simplifies grammar in an entirely new way; and it teaches a languages as it is actually used in everyday life.But this book is more than a guide to foreign languages; it goes deep into the roots of all knowledge as it explores the history of speech. It lights up the dim pathways of prehistory and unfolds the story of the slow growth of human expression from the most primitive signs and sounds to the elaborate variations of the highest cultures. Without language no knowledge would be possible; here we see how language is at once the source and the reservoir of all we know.
The Languages of the World
Kenneth Katzner - 1975
Written with the non-specialist in mind, its user-friendly style and layout, delightful original passages, and exotic scripts, will continue to fascinate the reader. This new edition has been thoroughly revised to include more languages, more countries, and up-to-date data on populations.Features include: *information on nearly 600 languages*individual descriptions of 200 languages, with sample passages and English translations*concise notes on where each language is spoken, its history, alphabet and pronunciation*coverage of every country in the world, its main language and speaker numbers*an introduction to language families
What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves
Benjamin K. Bergen - 2016
And yet, we sit idly by as words are banned from television and censored in books. We insist that people excise profanity from their vocabularies and we punish children for yelling the very same dirty words that we’ll mutter in relief seconds after they fall asleep. Swearing, it seems, is an intimate part of us that we have decided to selectively deny.That’s a damn shame. Swearing is useful. It can be funny, cathartic, or emotionally arousing. As linguist and cognitive scientist Benjamin K. Bergen shows us, it also opens a new window onto how our brains process language and why languages vary around the world and over time.In this groundbreaking yet ebullient romp through the linguistic muck, Bergen answers intriguing questions: How can patients left otherwise speechless after a stroke still shout Goddamn! when they get upset? When did a cock grow to be more than merely a rooster? Why is crap vulgar when poo is just childish? Do slurs make you treat people differently? Why is the first word that Samoan children say not mommy but eat shit? And why do we extend a middle finger to flip someone the bird?Smart as hell and funny as fuck, What the F is mandatory reading for anyone who wants to know how and why we swear.
The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory
J.A. Cuddon - 1982
Geared toward students, teachers, readers, and writers alike, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory explains critical jargon (intertextuality, aporia), schools of literary theory (structuralism, feminist criticism), literary forms (sonnet, ottava rima), and genres (elegy, pastoral) and examines artifacts, historic locales, archetypes, origins of well-known phrases, and much, much more. Scholarly, straightforward, comprehensive, and even entertaining, this is a resource that no word-lover should be without.
Linguistics: A Very Short Introduction
Peter Hugoe Matthews - 2003
Beginning at the 'arts' end of the subject with the common origins of languages, and finishing at the 'science' end with the newest discoveries regarding language in the brain, this stimulating guide covers all the major aspects of linguistics from a refreshing and insightful angle. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.
When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better And/Or Worse
Ben Yagoda - 2007
Not since School House Rock have adjectives, adverbs, articles, conjunctions, interjections, nouns, prepositions, pronouns, and verbs been explored with such infectious exuberance. Read If You Catch an Adjective, Kill It and:
Learn how to write better with classic advice from writers such as Mark Twain (“If you catch an adjective, kill it”), Stephen King (“I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs”), and Gertrude Stein (“Nouns . . . are completely not interesting”). Marvel at how a single word can shift from adverb (“I did okay”), to adjective (“It was an okay movie”), to interjection (“Okay!”), to noun (“I gave my okay”), to verb (“Who okayed this?”), depending on its use. Avoid the pretentious preposition at, a favorite of real estate developers (e.g., “The Shoppes at White Plains”). Laugh when Yagoda says he “shall call anyone a dork to the end of his days” who insists on maintaining the distinction between shall and will. Read, and discover a book whose pop culture references, humorous asides, and bracing doses of discernment and common sense convey Yagoda’s unique sense of the “beauty, the joy, the artistry, and the fun of language.”
Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals about the Mind
Margalit Fox - 2007
Just such a village -- an isolated Bedouin community in Israel with an unusually high rate of deafness -- is at the heart of "Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind." There, an indigenous sign language has sprung up, used by deaf and hearing villagers alike. It is a language no outsider has been able to decode, until now.A "New York Times" reporter trained as a linguist, Margalit Fox is the only Western journalist to have set foot in this remarkable village. In "Talking Hands, " she follows an international team of scientists that is unraveling this mysterious language.Because the sign language of the village has arisen completely on its own, outside the influence of any other language, it is a living demonstration of the "language instinct," man's inborn capacity to create language. If the researchers can decode this language, they will have helped isolate ingredients essential to all human language, signed and spoken. But as "Talking Hands" grippingly shows, their work in the village is also a race against time, because the unique language of the village may already be endangered."Talking Hands" offers a fascinating introduction to the signed languages of the world -- languages as beautiful, vital and emphatically human as any other -- explaining why they are now furnishing cognitive scientists with long-sought keys to understanding how language works in the mind.Written in lyrical, accessible prose, "Talking Hands" will captivate anyone interested in language, the human mind and journeys to exotic places.
Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications
Jeremy Munday - 2001
The texts discussed are taken from a broad range of languages - English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Punjabi, Portuguese and Spanish - and English translations are provided. A wide variety of text types is analysed, including a tourist brochure, a children's cookery book, a Harry Potter novel, the Bible, literary reviews and translators' prefaces, film translation, a technical text and a European Parliament speech. Each chapter includes the following features: * a table introducing key concepts * an introduction outlining the translation theory or theories * illustrative texts with translations * a chapter summary * discussion points and exercises.Including a general introduction, an extensive bibliography, and websites for further information, this is a practical, user-friendly textbook that gives a balanced and comprehensive insight into translation studies.
The Story of Art
E.H. Gombrich - 1950
Attracted by the simplicity and clarity of his writing, readers of all ages and backgrounds have found in Professor Gombrich a true master, and one who combines knowledge and wisdom with a unique gift for communicating his deep love of the subject. The Story of Art, one of the most famous and popular books on art ever written, has been a world bestseller for over four decades. Attracted by the simplicity and clarity of his writing, readers of all ages and backgrounds have found in Professor Gombrich a true master, and one who combines knowledge and wisdom with a unique gift for communicating his deep love of the subject.For the first time in many years the book has been completely redesigned. The illustrations, now in colour throughout, have all been improved and reoriginated, and include six fold-outs. The text has been revised and updated where appropriate, and a number of significant new artists have been incorporated. The bibliographies have been expanded and updated, and the maps and charts redrawn. The Story of Art has always been admired for two key qualities: it is a pleasure to read and a pleasure to handle. In these respects the new edition is true to its much-loved predecessors: the text runs as smoothly as ever and the improved illustrations are always on the page where the reader needs them. In its new edition, this classic work continues its triumphant progress tirelessly for yet another generation, to remain the title of first choice for any newcomer to art or the connoisseur. The Story of Art has always been admired for two key qualities: it is a pleasure to read and a pleasure to handle. In these respects the new edition is true to its much-loved predecessors: the text runs as smoothly as ever and the improved illustrations are always on the page where the reader needs them. In its new edition, this classic work continues its triumphant progress tirelessly for yet another generation, to remain the title of first choice for any newcomer to art or the connoisseur.