Telling the stories of English from its first, fraught centuries to its shape-shifting roles in the global community today, we will also master the fundamentals of more general linguistic study. Through an examination of the written word, the spoken word, and the “e-word,” we will tackle the complexities of the social and political significance of language.
Here is the Prezi that contains all of our daily slides:
In the first three minutes of this clip (before he begins to wax rhapsodic), Stephen Fry essentially sums up our course. (Here's a link to the same clip, on YouTube.)
Here is a list of the films that I have referenced during the course.
Companion website for the Gramley textbook
View a timeline of literary, historical, linguistic, and other events; download supplementary texts or optional exercises; and view the supplementary notes from the text (designated in blue, underlined, bold-face text beginning "link").
Possible etymology project words
amok ain't awesome boondock(s) clam up cool cop corn crap data debt decimate delight disinterested dream enormity fee gay genius gentle happy holy hooker hung/hanged island jake mad meh mystery nature naughty neat nice niggardly none obnoxious picnic quiz ratchet sad (throw) shade skulduggery/sculduddery slash sneak/snuck strive/strove suit swag syllabus virtue watch
You might try running a Google Books corpus study on your word.
Here's a blog post that's actually about a particular word the author feels is misused, but it also mentions differing lexicographical approaches.
Renaissance folk-etymologies gave us the names 'Anthony' and 'Katherine', and the same goes for 'Elizabeth'
The Renaissance also saw the return of initial, silent h- in words like 'history', thus ushering in usages like 'an historic moment'.
Renaissance scholars (yes, those ones who were so certain that they were better-read than their medieval predecessors!) bring us the erroneous, pseudo-etymologized spellings like 'ptarmigan' and 'debt'.
Playlist for 'The Story of English'
Alternatively, learn about The History of English in Ten Minutes - This is hilarious.
Meanwhile, T-Rex contemplates the history of English.
Some excellent HEL resources on the web
Accent Adventures
MTV's Josh Horowitz teaches 'Harry Potter' stars to speak 'American'
Hugh Laurie and Ellen learn new vocabulary
Note the cultural sphere from which the 'American' vocabulary is drawn, as opposed to that from which the 'British' vocabulary is drawn
...And, à-propos de rien, Hugh Laurie translates for Helen Mirren, until she outsmarts him
Recent video of residents of Tangier Island
The premise, that we can still hear Shakespearean English on the island, is a more than a little dubious, but there are some great clips here. Here is the relevant segment from "The Story of English."
New Zealand accent has become stronger over the past thirty years
David Crystal recording excerpts in original pronunciation
Similarly, here is a reconstruction of John Donne's Gunpowder Sermon of 1622.
An emerging phenomenon among young women, but beware of how it can hurt you!
Young Women Often Trendsetters in Vocal Patterns
Take heart, students mine! Your accent is spreading.
The Queen's own English is taking on more feature of Estuary English (3 Dec. 2006)
Shakespeare and Language
The myth of the unsurpassed vocabulary...
Think on my Words, a site with various data sets on Shakespeare's language
North American English Dialect Survey
The Dictionary of American Regional English is finally complete!
For now. This article gives some background and also mentions clever ways to keep doing dialectal research in the digital age, now that we no longer remember what whiffletrees and swingletrees are.
A recent kerfuffle over American English and its supposed corruption of British English
Matthew Engel wonders why some Americanisms irritate people - intriguingly for those of us who still enjoy a good, old-fashioned hike, he seems to think that it no longer refers to a nice tramp up a mountain. And as a native Californian, I have never heard the phrase 'open kimono' in any context, though I'd agree that it's a vivid expression.
Readers submit their most dreaded examples - Here, what's intriguing is how many of these expressions do not originate in America (though they may occupy a different place in current American English than they do in current British English) and how many could have been submitted as examples of the demise of grammar, which may or may not have its origin in American English.
Grant Barrett offers an American riposte
English in the World
When Aung San Suu Kyi gave a speech to commemorate the anniversary of her release from house arrest, she did so in English. Who else is she speaking to, outside of her own country? (14 Nov. 2011)
Learning from Brain Injuries
For information on Gabby Giffords' injury and recovery process, start at about 3:45. (14 Nov. 2011)
Listen to her respond in very brief utterances (1-3 words, mostly) to questions, starting at about 2:10 - the smile at 2:17 is pure Gabby!
You can hear more about the last ten months in this interview Mark Kelly gave to NPR.
Word-hoards
Lake Superior State University annual list of 'banned words'
A secret vault of words rejected from the OED
A follow-up on lexicographical hoarding
A rigorously cited dictionary of slang??
Wordlady meditates on the distinction between -or and -our spellings, mostly in Canada
On Grammar
BBC Newshour: David Crystal on slang (28 Sept. 2010)
Start at Chapter 2; see also 'Emma Thompson's comments,' below.
Emma Thompson's comments on grammar
Why are her views on plastic surgery deemed relevant?!?
Jane Austen's prose style...or not?
How the KJV changed the way we speak
Strunk and White as grammatically incompetent
The Wall Street Journal on the future of punctuation (22 Oct. 2011)
The comment about "haphazard innovation" in the medieval period is perhaps an accurate description in the sense that different people were doing different things, but I would say that plenty of scribes were very systematic (at least according to their own systems) about punctuation.
Speaking of punctuation, read here about the point d'autorité ('comme un parasol sur le sultan') and other marks of irony and sarcasm
Much as we tend to panic over the demise of grammar, we tend to try to link said demise with the internet. Well, here are Five Internet Annoyances that are Way Older than the Internet.
An argument against the dichotomy of 'prescriptive' and 'descriptive' approaches to grammar.
John McWhorter on Twitter and language marching on, 'proud and unafraid'
Nigerian pidgin ('Naija') gaining ground in country of 500 languages (24 Sept. 2012)
John McWhorter on why we don't need to worry about texting
On the strange state of English pronouns
Other Language Study
UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
World Atlas of Language Structures
Statistics on language use from Ethnologue
To learn writing, smaller isn't always better
NYTimes article on a large high school in Massachusetts
ETA: Okay, they are no longer accepting submissions, but you can still listen. Have you ever listened to a map before?
Chicago Assyrian Dictionary Project completes dictionary after 90 years (13 June 2011)
Fortunately, the Chicago Demotic Dictionary took only 37 years to produce! (20 Sept. 2012)
Oxford Online Database of Romance Verb Morphology
Carefully advertised as an 'interpretation' of previously published descriptions of Romance verb morphology. Neat!
Includes copyright-expired dictionaries and grammars, sometimes in scanned images, sometimes as online text
Creating an alphabet for the Shanjo language
Courtesy of BBC Newshour, 13 Sept. 2011 - should start playing Chapter 4
David Crystal's own website, which gives you access to his articles and his out-of-print books, as well as a link to his blog.
Children of immigrants often have to help their parents with both language and technology
Decoding workplace e-mails: Can you deduce rank from language used in messages?
At what grade level do members of Congress speak? (Whether a lower or higher grade level is necessarily a positive indicator is left to the reader to judge!)
The panelists on QI discuss onomatopoeia
The Vatican is attempting to revive Latin: They've been outsourcing translation work since the late 20th century, but the new Papal Latin Academy, with the help of scholars from various countries, will promote Latin both within the Catholic Church and in the secular world.
A fantastic map of the languages of Europe, known as 'Europa Polyglotta' (1730), using the opening of the Lord's Prayer to illustrate
How do you say 'Millenium Falcon' in Navajo? One difficulty of translation.
Could 'vocal grooming' explain more of the origins of human language than just trying to express information?
Here's a reconstruction of the sounds of Proto-Indo-European!
'Selfie' declared word of the year for 2013 by Oxford Dictionaries