Listen free for 30 days
Listen with offer
-
May We Borrow Your Language?
- How English Steals Words from All Over the World
- Narrated by: Richard Littledale
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
May We Borrow Your Language?
Buy Now for £11.79
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
Summary
The English language that is spoken by one billion people around the world is a linguistic mongrel, its vocabulary a diverse mix resulting from centuries of borrowing from other tongues.
From the Celtic languages of pre-Roman Britain to Norman French; from the Vikings' Old Scandinavian to Persian, Sanskrit, Algonquian, Cantonese and Hawaiian – amongst a host of others – we have enriched our modern language with such words as tulip, slogan, doolally, avocado, moccasin, ketchup and ukulele.
May We Borrow Your Language? explores the intriguing and unfamiliar stories behind scores of familiar words that the English language has filched from abroad; in so doing, it also sheds fascinating light on the wider history of the development of the English we speak today.
Full of etymological nuggets to intrigue and delight the reader, this is a gift book for word buffs to cherish – as cerebrally stimulating as it is more-ishly entertaining.
Philip Gooden writes books about language as well as historical crime novels. The former include Who's Whose? A No-Nonsense Guide to Easily-Confused Words, The Story of English, and (as co-author) Idiomantics and The Word at War.