A History of English

by Míša Hejná, George Walkden

Where does today's English language come from? This book takes its readers on a journey back in time, from present-day varieties to the Old English of Beowulf and beyond. Written for students with little or no background in linguistics, and reflecting the latest scholarship, it showcases the variation and change present throughout the history of English, and includes numerous exercises and sample texts for every period. The reverse-chronological approach taken by this book sets it apart from all existing textbooks of the last fifty years. Innovative features also include its focus on variation, multilingualism and language contact, its use of texts from outside the literary canon, and its inclusion of case studies from syntax, sociophonetics and historical pragmatics.

460 pages, Hardcover

Published June 16, 2022

About the author

Míša (Michaela) Hejná is an Associate Professor in English Language at Aarhus University. Her research interests lie primarily in the areas of language variation and change, phonetics and phonology, and interdisciplinary studies.

Reviews

[Lander · Rating 4 out of 5]

SORRY wholesome en frustrerend goed geschreven WOKE handboek geschiedenis van de Engelse taal, maar ik ben nog altijd een prescriptivist HAHAHA

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engelse taalkunde III, de geschiedenis van het Engels

[Yong Huang · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to justify one peculiar feature of this book: reverse chronology. Of dozens of books about history I've read, this is the only one that goes backward. I wasn't convinced of this approach at first, after reading the back-cover blurb. Now I am, after reading the book cover to cover. I think this is unique to history of language. Almost all kinds of histories, except that of language, have one thing in common, i.e. the farther back we go, the easier-to-understand the concepts we learn about, or at least the older things are about the same complex as later ones. Think of history of science, of philosophy or ideas, of culture, or just general history. But history of language is an outlier; we read more slowly and think harder when we read about earlier history (if such a book treats earlier history with equal weight), as more sound changes occurred in the past and grammar and vocabulary differ more from our modern language. In view of this unique feature of language history, this book leads the readers, not scholars in the authors' mind, to an easy read of Present Day English first, followed by Early Modern English (Shakespeare e.g.), then to the head-scratching Middle English (Chaucer e.g.), and to the egregiously obfuscated Old English (Beowulf e.g.). If the book were written following a more or less chronological order, an average reader would be immediately turned off and a college student would even drop this class. While human history generally goes from being simple to complex, the complexity of human language as we feel today has gone down over the centuries. Going backward in time gradually prepares readers with sufficient linguistic knowledge for the challenging chapters later. I applaud the authors' decision on this innovated approach.

Another merit of the book is its extreme clarity in describing concepts, rules and internal language changes, just enough to get the ideas across, leaving certain details that may be too technical in copious references. As a textbook, there are thought-provoking or simply interesting exercises at the end of each chapter, and answers to the questions at the end of the book. The authors know young people well and use their language, sometimes write in a conversational style, sprinkle humorous words and phrases here and there, making the book highly readable.

The book is very up-to-date, full of references to recent researches and 21st century even 2020's language phenomena. While the authors obviously made a great effort writing this book, they are so gracious to us all as to make the book available for free download (at https://langsci-press.org/catalog/boo...). They deserve a big round of applause.

[Eef Pannekoeke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Normaal ben ik geen voorstander van handboeken loggen, maar ik heb dit monster ondertussen vier keer gelezen dus ik vind dat dat mag! Heel interessant, alleen wordt alles echt 70 keer herhaald :// ik ben wel fan van de weetjes en de schrijfstijl :)

(oh en andere prof ETK wordt genamedropped dat was heel cool groetjes)

[miss omissis]

MOLTO carino molto semplice e approcciabile molto pieno di cose carine ed esercizi fatti bene e mi ha dato molta voglia di leggere qualcos'altro come followup +++++ consigliatissimo e gratis e open source