How do you react to sandwich boards, road signs, laminated instructions, and other written missives that are just not exactly what their creator meant? If you've ever (gently) judged anyone else for their linguistic failures, if you find yourself guffawing about the frequent confusion between "incontinence" and "inconvenience," if you've ever been tempted to whip out your marker to add in or cross out apostrophes, and if you've refused to answer e-mails in which "your" and "you're" are used interchangeably, this book is for you. With pictures culled from the Facebook group by the same name, I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar is a hilarious and eye-opening tour through restaurants and shops, through parking lots and along winding roads, and around the world.

    The Story of English illustrates the compelling history of how the relatively obscure dialects spoken by tribes from what are now Denmark, the Low Countries and northern Germany, became the most widely spoken language in the world, and of how that language evolved during the last two millennia.Chronologically ordered and divided into six main sections covering pre-Roman and Latin influences, the ascent of Old English, and the succession of Middle English, Early Modern and then Late Modern English to today's global language, this fascinating book also explores such factors as the history of the printing press, the works of Chaucer, the evolution of The American Dictionary of the English Language - commonly known as Webster's - and the magisterial Oxford English Dictionary, to the use of slang in today's speech and the coming of electronic messaging: language for a post-modern world.The Story of English is the perfect gift for any lover not just of English, but of the history and development of language.

    Worldwide some 380 million people speak English as a first language and some 600 million as a second language. A staggering one billion people are believed to be learning it. English is the premier international language in communications, science, business, aviation, entertainment, and diplomacy and also on the Internet. It has been one of the official languages of the United Nations since its founding in 1945. It is considered by many good judges to be well on the way to becoming the world's first universal language. Author Philip Gooden tells the story of the English language in all its richness and variety. From the intriguing origins and changing definitions of common words such as 'OK', 'beserk', 'curfew', 'cabal' and 'pow-wow', to the massive transformations wrought in the vocabulary and structure of the language by Anglo-Saxon and Norman conquest, through to the literary triumphs of Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales and the works of Shakespeare. The Story of English is a fascinating tale of linguistic, social and cultural transformation, and one that is accessibly and authoritatively told by an author in perfect command of his material.

    L. Doctorow, and Frank Rich, into a useful guide not just for writers but for everyone who wants to put their best foot forward in writing prose. Dreyer offers lessons on the ins and outs of punctuation and grammar, including how to navigate the words he calls "the confusables," like tricky homophones; the myriad ways to use (and misuse) a comma; and how to recognize--though not necessarily do away with--the passive voice. (Hint: If you can plausibly add "by zombies" to the end of a sentence, it's passive.) People are sharing their writing more than ever--on blogs, on Twitter--and this book lays out, clearly and comprehensibly, everything writers can do to keep readers focused on the real reason writers write: to communicate their ideas clearly and effectively. Chock-full of advice, insider wisdom, and fun facts on the rules (and nonrules) of the English language, this book will prove invaluable to everyone who wants to shore up their writing skills, mandatory for people who spend their time editing and shaping other people's prose, and--perhaps best of all--an utter treat for anyone who simply revels in language.

    However, because it leaves no permanent trace, its evolution has long been a mystery, and it is only in the last fifteen years that we have begun to understand how language came into being. "The First Word" is the compelling story of the quest for the origins of human language. The book follows two intertwined narratives. The first is an account of how language developed?how the random and layered processes of evolution wound together to produce a talking animal: us. The second addresses why scientists are at last able to explore the subject. For more than a hundred years, language evolution was considered a scientific taboo. Kenneally focuses on figures like Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker, along with cognitive scientists, biologists, geneticists, and animal researchers, in order to answer the fundamental question: Is language a uniquely human phenomenon? "The First Word" is the first book of its kind written for a general audience. Sure to appeal to fans of Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct" and Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel," Kenneally's book is set to join them as a seminal account of human history.

    With humor and insight, Melissa Mohr takes readers on a journey to discover how "swearing" has come to include both testifying with your hand on the Bible and calling someone a *#$&!* when they cut you off on the highway. She explores obscenities in ancient Rome and unearths the history of religious oaths in the Middle Ages, when swearing (or not swearing) an oath was often a matter of life and death. Holy Sh*t also explains the advancement of civility and corresponding censorship of language in the 18th century, considers the rise of racial slurs after World War II, examines the physiological effects of swearing and answers a question that preoccupies the FCC, the US Senate, and anyone who has recently overheard little kids at a playground: are we swearing more now than people did in the past?A gem of lexicography and cultural history, Holy Sh*t is a serious exploration of obscenity.

    The Natural Approach, widely associated with Tracy Terrell, introduces students to language inductively, by exposing them to vocabulary and structures in the context of lively activities. In this communicative approach, grammar explanations and practice are an aid to leaning the language, not an end in themselves. The Natural Approach in general - and Kontakte 3rd edition in particular - are highly communicative and create a spontaneous and low-anxiety classroom atmosphere in which the focus is first on comprehension, then on communication. Kontakte 3rd edition emphasizes culture as well as communication, with a variety of boxes, readings, and interactive culture-based activities. The third edition of Kontakte also includes a new listening comprehension tape that instructors can use in class as well as a new video, new interactive software and additional new supplements.

    

    It included Hebrew, a touch of the Romance and Slavic languages, and a large helping of German. In a world of earthly wandering, this pungent, witty, and infinitely nuanced speech, full of jokes, puns, and ironies, became the linguistic home of the Jews, the bond that held a people together.Here is the remarkable story of how this humble language took vigorous root in Eastern European shtetls and in the Jewish quarters of cities across Europe; how it achieved a rich literary flowering between the wars in Europe and America; how it was rejected by emancipated Jews; and how it fell victim to the Holocaust. And how, in yet another twist of destiny, Yiddish today is becoming the darling of academia. Yiddish is a history as story, a tale of flesh-and-blood people with manic humor, visionary courage, brilliant causes, and glorious flaws. It will delight everyone who cares about language, literature, and culture.

    Clearly explaining the letters as symbols of precise sounds of speech, the book begins with the earliest known alphabetic inscriptions (circa 1800 b.c.), recently discovered by archaeologists in Egypt, and traces the history of our alphabet through the ancient Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans and up through medieval Europe to the present day. But the heart of the book is the twenty-six fact-filled “biographies” of letters A through Z, each one identifying the letter’s particular significance for modern readers, tracing its development from ancient forms, and discussing its noteworthy role in literature and other media. We learn, for example, why letter X may have a sinister and sexual aura, how B came to signify second best, why the word mother in many languages starts with M. Combining facts both odd and essential, Letter Perfect is cultural history at its most accessible and enjoyable.

    It redirected philosophical attention to neglected questions of natural and metaphysical necessity and to the connections between these and theories of reference, in particular of naming, and of identity. From a critique of the dominant tendency to assimilate names to descriptions and more generally to treat their reference as a function of their Fregean sense, surprisingly deep and widespread consequences may be drawn. The largely discredited distinction between accidental and essential properties, both of individual things (including people) and of kinds of things, is revived. So is a consequent view of science as what seeks out the essences of natural kinds. Traditional objections to such views are dealt with by sharpening distinctions between epistemic and metaphysical necessity; in particular by the startling admission of necessary a posteriori truths. From these, in particular from identity statements using rigid designators whether of things or of kinds, further remarkable consequences are drawn for the natures of things, of people, and of kinds; strong objections follow, for example to identity versions of materialism as a theory of the mind.This seminal work, to which today's thriving essentialist metaphysics largely owes its impetus, is here published with a substantial new Preface by the author.

    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:

    But who were the early speakers of this ancient mother tongue, and how did they manage to spread it around the globe? Until now their identity has remained a tantalizing mystery to linguists, archaeologists, and even Nazis seeking the roots of the Aryan race. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language lifts the veil that has long shrouded these original Indo-European speakers, and reveals how their domestication of horses and use of the wheel spread language and transformed civilization.Linking prehistoric archaeological remains with the development of language, David Anthony identifies the prehistoric peoples of central Eurasia's steppe grasslands as the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European, and shows how their innovative use of the ox wagon, horseback riding, and the warrior's chariot turned the Eurasian steppes into a thriving transcontinental corridor of communication, commerce, and cultural exchange. He explains how they spread their traditions and gave rise to important advances in copper mining, warfare, and patron-client political institutions, thereby ushering in an era of vibrant social change. Anthony also describes his fascinating discovery of how the wear from bits on ancient horse teeth reveals the origins of horseback riding.The Horse, the Wheel, and Language solves a puzzle that has vexed scholars for two centuries--the source of the Indo-European languages and English--and recovers a magnificent and influential civilization from the past.

    This textbook provides a lucid and integrative analysis of the central topics in pragmatics - deixis, implicature, presupposition, speech acts, and conversational structure. A central concern of the book is the relation between pragmatics and semantics, and Dr Levinson shows clearly how a pragmatic approach can resolve some of the problems semantics have been confronting and simplifying semantic analyses. The exposition is always clear and supported by helpful exemplification. The detailed analyses of selected topics give the student a clear view of the empirical rigour demanded by the study of linguistic pragmatics, but Dr Levinson never loses sight of the rich diversity of the subject. An introduction and conclusion relate pragmatics to other fields in linguistics and other disciplines concerned with language usage - psychology, philosophy, anthropology and literature.

    Because of the different spellings and conventions of American English, it has been unavailable here--until now. The new book is thoroughly revised, updated, expanded, and Americanized. It maintains the attractions of the original--friendly, easy-to-understand rules for improved writing. It's a quick read, and an easy reference for anybody who wants to communicate clearly with American English. The book is non-technical in its approach. It doesn't cover grammatical terms such as present perfect progressive or correlative conjunctions. It boils grammar and style into a few simple rules that will serve you well whether you are a journalist, a student, a novelist, a business executive, a blogger, or anybody else who would like to make effective use of written language.