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3.74 AVERAGE
3.74 AVERAGE
The Adven-Bloody-Ture of the Eng-Bloody-Ish Lang-Bloody-Uage
Review of the Audible Studios audiobook edition (2005) of the hardcover original (2004)
Very entertaining and loaded with terrific general knowledge trivia. I listened to the audiobook and the performance by Robert Powell alone was worth the price of admission.
Trivia eg. We all mostly know that [a:Mark Twain|1244|Mark Twain|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1322103868p2/1244.jpg] is the pen name of Samuel Clemens, but did you know he took it from the expression to measure 2 fathoms of water depth from a riverboat?
A discovery for me was the Jamaican patois poetry of [a:Louise Bennett-Coverley|39226|Louise Bennett-Coverley|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1435601071p2/39226.jpg] aka Miss Lou esp. her "Bans O' Killing", in defense of patois as a legitimate dialect that stands with others such as Scots & Irish brogue, Yorkshire & Cockney dialects, etc:
BANS O’ KILLING” , 1944
So yuh a de man, me hear bout!
Ah yuh dem sey dah-teck
Whole heap o’ English oat sey dat
Yuh gwine kill dialect!
Meck me get it straight Mass Charlie
For me noh quite undastan,
Yuh gwine kill all English dialect
Or jus Jamaica one?
Ef yuh dah-equal up wid English
Language, den wha meck
Yuh gwine go feel inferior, wen
It come to dialect?
..
Ef yuh kean sing “Linstead Market”
An “Wata come a me y’eye”,
Yuh wi haffi tap sing “Auld lang syne”
An “Comin thru de rye”.
Dah language weh yuh proad o’,
Weh yuh honour and respeck,
Po’ Mass Charlie! Yuh noh know sey
Dat it spring from dialect!
Dat dem start fe try tun language,
From de fourteen century,
Five hundred years gawn an dem got
More dialect dan we!
Yuh wi haffe kill de Lancashire
De Yorkshire, de Cockney
De broad Scotch an de Irish brogue
Before yuh start to kill me!
Yuh wi haffe get de Oxford book
O’ English verse, an tear
Out Chaucer, Burns, Lady Grizelle
An plenty o’ Shakespeare!
Wen yuh done kill “wit” an “humour”
Wen yuh kill “Variety”
Yuh wi haffe fine a way fe kill
Originality!
An mine how yuh dah-read dem English
Book deh pon yuh shelf
For ef yuh drop a “h” yuh mighta
Haffe kill yuhself.
The example of tmesis (to insert a word inside another word) and the use of "bloody" in the poem "The Integrated Adjective" by [a:John O'Grady|136921|John O'Grady|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png] was another standout :D
THE INTEGRATED ADJECTIVE
I was down on Riverina, knockin’ round the towns a bit,
An’ occasionally restin’, with a schooner in me mitt;
An’ on one o’ these occasions, when the bar was pretty full
an’ the local blokes were arguin’ assorted kinds o’ bull,
I heard a conversation, most peculiar in its way,
Because only in Australia would you hear a joker say,
“Where yer bloody been, yer drongo? ‘Aven’t seen yer fer a week;
“An’ yer mate was lookin’ for yer when ‘e come in from the Creek;
“‘E was lookin’ up at Ryan’s, an’ around at bloody Joe’s,
“An’ even at the Royal where ‘e bloody never goes.”
An’ the other bloke said “Seen ‘im. Owed ‘im ‘alf a bloody quid,
“Forgot ter give ut back to ‘im; but now I bloody did.
“Coulda used the thing me-bloody-self; been orf the bloody booze,
“Up at Tumba-bloody-rumba shootin’ kanga-bloody-roos.”
The book includes the apocryphal story that when the convict settlers to Australia asked the aboriginals what was the name of the odd animal with the pouch and heard "kangaroo," it actually meant "I don't understand what you're saying."
Review of the Audible Studios audiobook edition (2005) of the hardcover original (2004)
Very entertaining and loaded with terrific general knowledge trivia. I listened to the audiobook and the performance by Robert Powell alone was worth the price of admission.
Trivia eg. We all mostly know that [a:Mark Twain|1244|Mark Twain|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1322103868p2/1244.jpg] is the pen name of Samuel Clemens, but did you know he took it from the expression to measure 2 fathoms of water depth from a riverboat?
A discovery for me was the Jamaican patois poetry of [a:Louise Bennett-Coverley|39226|Louise Bennett-Coverley|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1435601071p2/39226.jpg] aka Miss Lou esp. her "Bans O' Killing", in defense of patois as a legitimate dialect that stands with others such as Scots & Irish brogue, Yorkshire & Cockney dialects, etc:
BANS O’ KILLING” , 1944
So yuh a de man, me hear bout!
Ah yuh dem sey dah-teck
Whole heap o’ English oat sey dat
Yuh gwine kill dialect!
Meck me get it straight Mass Charlie
For me noh quite undastan,
Yuh gwine kill all English dialect
Or jus Jamaica one?
Ef yuh dah-equal up wid English
Language, den wha meck
Yuh gwine go feel inferior, wen
It come to dialect?
..
Ef yuh kean sing “Linstead Market”
An “Wata come a me y’eye”,
Yuh wi haffi tap sing “Auld lang syne”
An “Comin thru de rye”.
Dah language weh yuh proad o’,
Weh yuh honour and respeck,
Po’ Mass Charlie! Yuh noh know sey
Dat it spring from dialect!
Dat dem start fe try tun language,
From de fourteen century,
Five hundred years gawn an dem got
More dialect dan we!
Yuh wi haffe kill de Lancashire
De Yorkshire, de Cockney
De broad Scotch an de Irish brogue
Before yuh start to kill me!
Yuh wi haffe get de Oxford book
O’ English verse, an tear
Out Chaucer, Burns, Lady Grizelle
An plenty o’ Shakespeare!
Wen yuh done kill “wit” an “humour”
Wen yuh kill “Variety”
Yuh wi haffe fine a way fe kill
Originality!
An mine how yuh dah-read dem English
Book deh pon yuh shelf
For ef yuh drop a “h” yuh mighta
Haffe kill yuhself.
The example of tmesis (to insert a word inside another word) and the use of "bloody" in the poem "The Integrated Adjective" by [a:John O'Grady|136921|John O'Grady|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png] was another standout :D
THE INTEGRATED ADJECTIVE
I was down on Riverina, knockin’ round the towns a bit,
An’ occasionally restin’, with a schooner in me mitt;
An’ on one o’ these occasions, when the bar was pretty full
an’ the local blokes were arguin’ assorted kinds o’ bull,
I heard a conversation, most peculiar in its way,
Because only in Australia would you hear a joker say,
“Where yer bloody been, yer drongo? ‘Aven’t seen yer fer a week;
“An’ yer mate was lookin’ for yer when ‘e come in from the Creek;
“‘E was lookin’ up at Ryan’s, an’ around at bloody Joe’s,
“An’ even at the Royal where ‘e bloody never goes.”
An’ the other bloke said “Seen ‘im. Owed ‘im ‘alf a bloody quid,
“Forgot ter give ut back to ‘im; but now I bloody did.
“Coulda used the thing me-bloody-self; been orf the bloody booze,
“Up at Tumba-bloody-rumba shootin’ kanga-bloody-roos.”
The book includes the apocryphal story that when the convict settlers to Australia asked the aboriginals what was the name of the odd animal with the pouch and heard "kangaroo," it actually meant "I don't understand what you're saying."
I enjoyed this quite a lot. History comes alive when you can actually hear the people speaking, and that’s what this book does. It tells us where all the words come from, the words that run through the minds of all of us English speakers. It shows the relationship between the language and the other languages around it, where walls were built and where walls were penetrated. Treating the language as a living entity works beautifully; we can really feel its muscle.
A bit jingoistic but full of telling anecdotes and vivid examples. I'd like to see the companion tv program.
From the history of its inception and growth to the story of its additions from other countries, this story about our language is fascinating.
I think I learned a lot from this book, but I’m not sure how much of it was accurate. Much was certainly biased. After reading his chapters on American English, I started to pay more attention to his sources, and what I found was not encouraging. The majority of his sources seem to be highly educated white men writing about the other languages and cultures English came into contact with, rather than those languages and cultures themselves.
First, I appreciate Bragg’s approach of anthropomorphizing the English language, placing it as the hero of its story, and showing that hero’s journey. This should not, however, automatically lead to ignoring the real damage that language has done to cultures and people throughout its global spread.
His nods to the forced slavery of African Americans, genocide of Native Americans, imperial rule of India, colonization of the West Indies — all felt like lip service, as though making the English language the hero means we should celebrate its survival even as it cut through whole nations. He barely acknowledged any English being spoken on the African continent at all. And to judge by this book, only about half a dozen women ever spoke or wrote in English, half of them British royalty.
Eventually I stopped marking every instance of this. As one example, here’s his discussion of Uncle Remus:
——
“Uncle Remus, to make life a little difficult, was a white man, ‘undersized, red-haired and somewhat freckled,’ called Joel Chandler Harris. However, according to Mark Twain, in writing about the ‘Negro dialect,’ Harris was ‘the only master the country has produced.’ … It seems to me to matter very little that Harris was white. What matters is that he was a collector of stories in the ‘ling’ (his word) on the plantations of the south Atlantic states. Who knows if Homer was Greek? The stories he told tell us about that people.
“Harris' stories, judging from the appreciation of generations of African Americans for the Uncle Remus stories, stand for what was being celebrated.”
——
Rather than look to the scholarship of African Americans on the topic, Bragg turns to Mark Twain (and please note his use of the word “master”) and concludes that it doesn’t matter who wrote the tales of Uncle Remus (or the dialect they’re written in) because African Americans seem to like them (citation needed?), so it must be OK.
Perhaps it’s simply a product of its time (the book is, after all, 20 years old), but I refuse to accept there wasn’t more scholarship available from the very groups English subjugated that Bragg could have cited at the time to produce a more complete picture of the journey it took around the world.
First, I appreciate Bragg’s approach of anthropomorphizing the English language, placing it as the hero of its story, and showing that hero’s journey. This should not, however, automatically lead to ignoring the real damage that language has done to cultures and people throughout its global spread.
His nods to the forced slavery of African Americans, genocide of Native Americans, imperial rule of India, colonization of the West Indies — all felt like lip service, as though making the English language the hero means we should celebrate its survival even as it cut through whole nations. He barely acknowledged any English being spoken on the African continent at all. And to judge by this book, only about half a dozen women ever spoke or wrote in English, half of them British royalty.
Eventually I stopped marking every instance of this. As one example, here’s his discussion of Uncle Remus:
——
“Uncle Remus, to make life a little difficult, was a white man, ‘undersized, red-haired and somewhat freckled,’ called Joel Chandler Harris. However, according to Mark Twain, in writing about the ‘Negro dialect,’ Harris was ‘the only master the country has produced.’ … It seems to me to matter very little that Harris was white. What matters is that he was a collector of stories in the ‘ling’ (his word) on the plantations of the south Atlantic states. Who knows if Homer was Greek? The stories he told tell us about that people.
“Harris' stories, judging from the appreciation of generations of African Americans for the Uncle Remus stories, stand for what was being celebrated.”
——
Rather than look to the scholarship of African Americans on the topic, Bragg turns to Mark Twain (and please note his use of the word “master”) and concludes that it doesn’t matter who wrote the tales of Uncle Remus (or the dialect they’re written in) because African Americans seem to like them (citation needed?), so it must be OK.
Perhaps it’s simply a product of its time (the book is, after all, 20 years old), but I refuse to accept there wasn’t more scholarship available from the very groups English subjugated that Bragg could have cited at the time to produce a more complete picture of the journey it took around the world.
informative
medium-paced
I enjoyed this, but I was also in a Linguistics class while I was reading this book and saw how oversimplified it is. It is borderline juvenile (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) and makes some claims that aren't really justified by the rest of the text. Overall, I enjoyed this book but felt that it was a little too simple.
This review refers to the Audible edition. The early part of this book moves quickly and the reader's ability to pronounce the early examples makes it fascinating. The book is interesting,but drags during the seemingly endless lists of words used in the last few chapters.
reflective
slow-paced
Finally, although the TV series was probably very good, the book’s roots in television show too clearly in the shallowness of the approach. Some chapters, for example, are almost nothing but lists of words with a few paragraphs in between. Overall, although I learned a few interesting facts, I was disappointed.
See my complete review here:
http://whatmeread.wordpress.com/tag/the-adventure-of-english/
See my complete review here:
http://whatmeread.wordpress.com/tag/the-adventure-of-english/