Marcus Berkmann * Daily Mail *Ī Must Read.An entertaining and fascinating study of how English spelling became so wildly inconsistent. This masterly book is a deft guide with a light touch - Harry Mount * TLS *Ī spelling book with a difference * Yorkshire Gazette and Herald *Ĭrystal's splendid book, the latest in a long line by this prolific language truffler, proceeds chronologically, deep in learning and characteristically light on its feet. The fascinating and surprising history of English spelling from David Crystal, everyones favorite expert logophile With The Story of English in 100 Words, David Crystal took us on a tour through the history of our language. highly entertaining * Observer *Ī prolific author. he can write with authority on trends in the spelling of rhubarb and indeed on the history of the spelling of any tricky word you care to mention. English spelling is as rich a mixture of anachronism, privilege and fashion as the House of Lords * Sunday Times *Ī prolific author. Crystal's many examples show that the development of English spelling is as random, unsystematic and anomalous as the British constitution. If you've ever asked yourself questions like 'Why do the words 'their', 'there' and 'they're' sound alike, but mean very different things?' or 'How can we tell the difference between 'charge' the verb and 'charge' the noun?' David Crystal's Spell It Out will spell it all out for you.Entertaining. He looks at influences from other cultures, and explains how English speakers understood that the 'o' in 'hopping' was a short vowel, rather than the long vowel of 'hoping'. He considers the question of vowels and how people developed a way to tell whether or not it was long or short. He looks individually at each letter in the alphabet and its origins. He never loses sight of language as a form of human expressionwhether through orthography or pronunciation. What I admire most about Crystals scholarship in Spell It Out is its humanity. Now, with Spell It Out, he takes on the task of answering all the questions about how we spell: 'Why is English spelling so difficult?' Or 'Why are good spellers so proud of their achievement that when they see a misspelling they condemn the writer as sloppy, lazy, or uneducated?' In thirty-seven short, engaging and informative chapters, Crystal takes readers on a history of English spelling, starting with the Roman missionaries' sixth century introduction of the Roman alphabet and ending with where the language might be going. David Crystal is a prolific scholar of linguistics who specializes in language.

With The Story of English in 100 Words, David Crystal took us on a tour through the history of our language.

The fascinating and surprising history of English spelling from David Crystal, everyone's favorite expert logophile

Spell It Out by David Crystal