Walking English

 By: ryan    9:30 AM  Linguistics, Travelogue   No comments

Title: Walking English
Author: David Crystal
Publisher: The Overlook Press
ISBN: 9781590202630

Back Cover text
David Crystal has been described by the Times Higher education Supplement as a "latter-day Samuel Johnson." Now, in a delightfully discursive journey through the grooves and thickets of the English language, Crystal sets off again, combining personal reflections, historical allusions, and traveler's observations to create a mesmerizing and entertaining narrative account of his encounters with the language and its speakers.

Starting in his home of Wales and moving from England all the way to Poland and to San Francisco, Crystal encounters numerous linguistic side roads that he cannot resist exploring. All the subject to Crystal's inquisitive exploration, from pubs to trains to Tolkien and each digression casts new light on the development of English as it is spoken today.

Walking English is a linguistic travelogue like no other, and an attempt to capture the seductive, quirky, teasing, tantalizing nature of the language itself. A jaunty Bill Bryson-esque exploration of language by a foremost expert on the subject.