David Crystal

Why is there an 'h' in ghost? William Caxton, inventor of the printing press, and his Flemish employees are to blame: without a dictionary or style guide to hand in fifteenth century Bruges, the typesetters simply spelt it the way it sounded to their foreign ears, and it stuck. Seventy-five per cent of English spelling is regular, but twenty-five per...

The world of books has played a striking role in the history of English vocabulary. Book itself is one of the oldest words in the language, originating from boc in Old English, and appears in many commonly used expressions today such as by the book, bring to book, and bookworm, to name a few. With the arrival of printing, typesetting,...

An absolutely joyous, gasp-out-loud achievement. - Stephen Fry Shakespeare's flame is infectious. An olympic torch, for us all, to be enlightened, words which share the shadow and light of humanity's hues. - LionHeart, artist, poet and BBC Radio London presenter Silver Medal Winner at the 2024 Nautilus Book Awards. Shakespeare had an ear and hand that was able to capture...

A lively journey through the story of language, from an infant's first word to the languages of the internet. Language never leaves you alone. It's there in your head, helping you think. It's there to help you make relationships – and to break them. It's there to remind you who you are and where you come from. From the first...

What do a comic alphabet, a glorious lipogram and a wellerism have in common? Or, an audit of accountants, an illusion of magicians, and an intrusion of spammers? And do you know how Shakespeare pronounced his name? Quirky, original, amusing and enlightening, this charming English Language Miscellany from David Crystal, one of the greatest British linguists of our time, offers...

This book is a pioneering exploration of Tyndale's enormous impact on the development of the English language.'Dearly beloved', 'say the word', 'the powers that be', 'for ever and ever' these familiar phrases and many more were set down in print for the first time by William Tyndale. For his groundbreaking English translation of the Bible, he deliberately chose to write...

A collection of 366 facts about language to enliven each day of the year. In this ingenious and diverse collection of 366 stories, events and facts about language, David Crystal presents a selection of insights from literary and linguistic writers, poets and global institutions, together with the weird and wonderful creations of language enthusiasts to enliven each day of the...

The vocabulary of past times, no longer used in English, is always fascinating, especially when we see how it was pilloried by the satirists of the day. Here we have Victorian high and low society, with its fashionable and unfashionable slang, its class awareness, and the jargon of steam engines, motor cars, and other products of the Industrial Revolution. Then...

This engaging history of punctuation (Wall Street Journal) is not only the first history of its kind, but a complete guide on how to use English punctuation. Behind every punctuation mark lies a thousand stories. The punctuation of English, marked with occasional rationality, is founded on arbitrariness and littered with oddities. For a system of a few dozen marks, it...

An absolutely joyous, gasp-out-loud achievement. - Stephen Fry A cathedral of consciousness - Shakespeare's uncanny insight into human nature finds us, unearthed here. - LionHeart, artist, poet, and BBC Radio London presenter Shakespeare had an ear and hand that was able to capture our everyday thoughts and emotions, pin them to a page, and express them so well that still...

Pronunciation governs our regional and social identity more powerfully than any other aspect of spoken language. No wonder, then, that it has attracted most attention from satirists. In this intriguing book, David Crystal shows how our feelings about pronunciation today have their origins in the way our Victorian predecessors thought about the subject, as revealed in the pages of the...

How Language Works by David Crystal is a fascinating tour through the world of language from one of today's most renowned experts. This book ranges over everything from how children learn to read to what makes words rude or polite, from eyebrow flashes to whistling languages. Unlocking the secrets of communication in an accessible, entertaining way, this exhilarating book sheds...

A many-faceted exploration of spoken eloquence: how it works, how it has evolved, and how to tap its remarkable power. We all know eloquence when we hear it. But what exactly is it? And how might we gain more of it for ourselves? This entertaining and, yes, eloquent book illuminates the power of language from a linguistic point of view...

Silly season, spring chicken, Shrovetide, dog days, Halloween, wassail, Snowtober, Hogmanay, and over 100 other words and phrases are brought together here to show how seasonal vocabulary has become one of the most productive areas of the English lexicon. Words associated with spring, summer, autumn or fall, and winter, along with 'season' itself, have long been used creatively in such...

Now in paperback, in the tradition of E. H. Gombrich's A Little History of the World, a lively journey through the story of language. With a language disappearing every two weeks and neologisms springing up almost daily, an understanding of the origins and currency of language has never seemed more relevant. In this charming volume, a narrative history written explicitly...

"The man is a national treasure" - John Humphrys In this fascinating survey of everything from how sounds become speech to how names work, David Crystal answers every question you might ever have had about the nuts and bolts of language in his usual highly illuminating way. Along the way, we find out about eyebrow flashes, whistling languages, how parents...