Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling Paperback - 2010
by David Wolman
Wolman offers an engaging narrative that spells out the history of the English language and the people who have tried to make spelling make sense.
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From the rear cover
When did ghost acquire its silent h? Will cyberspace kill the one in rhubarb? And was it really rocket scientists who invented spell-check?
In Righting the Mother Tongue, author David Wolman tells the cockamamie story of English spelling, by way of a wordly adventure from English battlefields to Google headquarters. Along the way, he joins spelling reformers picketing the national spelling bee, visits the town in Belgium--not England--where the first English books were printed, and takes a road trip with the boss at Merriam-Webster Inc. Wolman punctuates the journey with spelling wars waged by the likes of Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster, Theodore Roosevelt, and Andrew Carnegie.
Rich with history, pop culture, curiosity, and humor, Righting the Mother Tongue explores how English spelling came to be, traces efforts to mend the code, and imagines the shape of tomorrow's words.
Details
- Title Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling
- Author David Wolman
- Binding Paperback
- Edition Reprint
- Pages 224
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher Harper Perennial
- Publication date 2010-04-01
- Features Bibliography, Index, Table of Contents
- ISBN 9780061369261 / 0061369268
- Weight 0.37 lbs (0.17 kg)
- Dimensions 8.1 x 5.44 x 0.55 in (20.57 x 13.82 x 1.40 cm)
- Category Language Arts / Linguistics / Literacy
- Dewey Decimal Code 421.52
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