The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English

Factually fascinating, but lacking the wit and sparkle that makes some works (even academic,footnoted ones) irresistible. Still, this is one book I won't be giving away, and I know I will fondly pick it up often.The best example of a sparkling academic-ish book is "The Canon: The Beautiful basics of Science" by Natalie Angier. ( )

This is not a page-turner, but nor was it intended to be. I still found myself (slowly) getting through the book to the end. This is a fabulous source for quiz-night questions - part-history and all etymology. Hitchings wows with his breadth of knowledge of words generally and especially of borrowings from other languages. Great index of the words used as examples in the text - making it easy to dive back in and check half-remembered facts. (Like - the extinct language of Haiti gave us canoe, papaya, maize and cassava; honcho (as in head honcho) is Japanese and not Spanish/Latino as everyone in my very small straw poll thought.) Read October 2010. ( )

An enjoyable relaxed stroll through history and the evolution of our language. Amongst all the fascinating details three things stood out for me in particular.
Firstly we have the choice of several words to convey similar ideas, the root source will reflect the character and the way the word is used. Anglo Saxon origin words will have a rough and ready, robust meaning, French origin words will have a more sophisticated connotation and Latin derived will have a formal legalise usage.
Secondly the paucity of words to describe objects and concepts available to our early speakers. As the influx of words into English is traced through the centuries you get this incredible impression of the horizons and range in interest opening up with words coming in to name and describe these new experiences.
Like the landscape we live our language is steeped in the history of our people. All those modern current words and phrases we use and live with so often are centuries old and record some long forgotten events back in the mists of time. Though our language is always evolving and moving forward it envelops our past even if we fail to realise it. What way to discover our history by understanding the origins of our language.
Surrender to the book and enjoy the revelling in us as a people. ( )

You like this book if you are fascinated by words and if you like history. A particularly good feature is an index of all the words mentioned and defined in the text. ( )

Not as much linguistic flow as I expected, more historical than I expected. A lot tougher to get through than some other related books, but still a good read. ( )