It's the most simple, unassuming, innocent-looking verb: to be. Yet it is jam-packed with more different meanings, forms, and uses than any other English word. As he reveals be's multiple incarnations, David Crystal takes us to the heart of our flexible and changing language. He tells the intriguing story in 26 chapters, each linked to a particular usage. We meet circumstantial be ("how are you?"), numerical be ("two and two is four"), quotative be ("so I was like, 'wow'"), and ludic be ("oh no he isn't "), and a whole swarm of other meanings....
It's the most simple, unassuming, innocent-looking verb: to be. Yet it is jam-packed with more different meanings, forms, and uses than any o...
In Making Sense, David Crystal confronts the foe of many: grammar. Once taught relentlessly to all students in the English-speaking world, grammar disappeared from most school curricula, so that terms such as "preposition" and "conjunction" now often confound children and adults alike. Explaining the nuts and bolts of grammar presents a special challenge, because - far more than is the case with spelling and punctuation - the subject is burdened with a centuries-old history of educational practice that many will recall as anything but glamorous. One of the world's foremost...
In Making Sense, David Crystal confronts the foe of many: grammar. Once taught relentlessly to all students in the English-speaking world, gr...
Have you ever cringed while hearing someone mispronounce a word--or, worse, been tripped up by a wily silent letter yourself? Consider yourself lucky that you do not live in Victorian England, when the way you pronounced a word was seen as a sometimes-damning index of who you were and how you should be treated. No wonder then that jokes about English usage provided one of Punch magazine's most fruitful veins of humor for sixty years, from its first issue in 1841 to 1900. For We Are Not Amused, renowned English-language expert David Crystal has explored the most common...
Have you ever cringed while hearing someone mispronounce a word--or, worse, been tripped up by a wily silent letter yourself? Consider yourself lucky ...
An essential text for a new generation of twenty-first-century English language enthusiasts, its dual purpose as both a reference and textbook will appeal to English language lecturers and students as well as non-native English speakers. Audio resources recorded by David Crystal for this new edition bring the text to life.
An essential text for a new generation of twenty-first-century English language enthusiasts, its dual purpose as both a reference and textbook will ap...
