In the last five hundred years or so, the English language has undergone remarkable geographical expansion, bringing it into contact with other languages in new locations. It also caused different regional dialects of the language to come into contact with each other in colonial situations. This book is made up of a number of fascinating tales of historical-sociolinguistic detection. These are stories of origins of a particular variety of English or linguistic feature which together tell a compelling general story. In each case, Trudgill presents an intriguing puzzle, locates and examines the...

In the last five hundred years or so, the English language has undergone remarkable geographical expansion, bringing it into contact with other languages in new locations. It also caused different regional dialects of the language to come into contact with each other in colonial situations. This book is made up of a number of fascinating tales of historical-sociolinguistic detection. These are stories of origins of a particular variety of English or linguistic feature which together tell a compelling general story. In each case, Trudgill presents an intriguing puzzle, locates and examines the...