Author : Howard Beck
Publisher :
Page : 282 pages
File Size : 31,97 MB
Release : 2017-09-04
Category :
ISBN : 9781549591112
English is the world's most dynamic tongue, a linguistic trove throughout millennia added to by successive waves of invaders and settlers: Celt, Roman, Viking, Anglo-Saxon, Norman, the whole leavened with wordy plunder of former Empire. It is a linguistic treasure trove, expanding continuously through the coining of new words and augmented and enriched by regional slang and dialect, supplemented by foreign 'loan words' considered of some utility. This continuous verbal metamorphosis results today in a lexicon melting pot, a bubbling vocabulary of around 500,000 words -- as opposed to French, which has a mere 70,000. And herein lies the versatility of the English tongue, a Latin-based language that is pliant in its adaptability, vested in wordy agility and subtle nuance -- a veritable textual mother lode for poets and authors to mine.Examined phonetically some humble words are found to harbour subtle, unexpected meanings, awaiting interpretation in an entirely tangential or humorous way far removed from the intended original. Amused by this I decided to pick up the English lexicon, give it a good old shake to see what tumbled from the pages. This volume is the result. It offers a tongue-in-cheek metaphor to all the intractable (or should that be a hard-to-control male bovine) language convention. So dear reader, if you wish to know the difference between snorks and applejacks , or plan to go gongoozling, or maybe try some turnim leg, then make sure you have some frangers at hand. If after all that you feel peppered then prepare yourself some blandishments and don't yalm them too fast.