{"id":5462,"date":"2012-06-11T12:26:45","date_gmt":"2012-06-11T16:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/?p=5462"},"modified":"2012-06-11T12:26:45","modified_gmt":"2012-06-11T16:26:45","slug":"two-books-about-the-origin-of-the-english-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/two-books-about-the-origin-of-the-english-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Books about the Origins of the English Language"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/2012-06-11-Two-Books-about-the-Origin-of-the-English-Language.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-5463\" title=\"Two Books about the Origin of the English Language\" src=\"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/2012-06-11-Two-Books-about-the-Origin-of-the-English-Language-300x232.png\" alt=\"Two Books about the Origin of the English Language\" width=\"300\" height=\"232\" \/><\/a>In this interesting article from the <em>Times Literary Supplement<\/em>, Tom Shippey reviews two books about the origins of the English language. <em>The History of English Spelling<\/em> looks at the history of the spelling of English words based on a substantial collection of data from Christopher Upward. Shippey also explores Richard J. Watts\u2019<em> Language Myths and the History of English<\/em>, a book that examines popular English myths and their origins.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<h3>The myth of English as a global language<\/h3>\n<p>English spelling is notoriously inconsistent, and some have gone further, calling it \u201cthe world\u2019s most awesome mess\u201d or \u201can insult to human intelligence\u201d (both these from linguists, one American, one Austrian). Maybe this is just because our alphabet only has twenty-six letters to represent more than forty phonemes, or distinctive speech-sounds, and some of those \u2013 notably q and x \u2013 are not pulling their weight, while j is not allowed to (see \u201cJohn\u201d but also \u201cGeorge\u201d). If we gave s and z a consistent value (\u201cseazon\u201d) and extended this to k and c (\u201cklok\u201d and \u201csertain\u201d), we could free c up for other duties, such as maybe representing ch, as once it did. But then there are all the vowels . . . .\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this interesting article from the Times Literary Supplement, Tom Shippey reviews two books about the origins of the English language. The History of English &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[55,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5462"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5462"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5466,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5462\/revisions\/5466"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}