The English is coming!
Subtitle: how one language is sweeping the world
By: Leslie Dunton-Downer ; illustrations by Mary Rhinelander ; maps and graphs by Kris Goodfellow
Contributors: Rhinelander, Mary F.; Goodfellow, Kris
Edition: 1st Touchstone hardcover ed.
Publisher: Touchstone Book
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 326
ISBN-13: 9781439176658; 9781439176696
Subjects: Globalization; English language; NEW LIST 20100930; Foreign countries
Description: "Through the fascinating stories of thirty English words used and understood in nearly all corners of the globe, The English Is Coming! takes readers on an eye-opening journey across culture and commerce, war and peace, and time and space. These mini-histories shed new light on everyday words: the strange turns of fate by which their meanings evolved and their new roles as the building blocks of the first language ever to forge a global community. Exploring such familiar terms as shampoo (from a Hindi word for scalp and body hygiene long practiced in India); robot (coined by Czech painter Josef Capek for his brother Karel's 1921 play about man-made creatures); credit (rooted in a prehistoric phrase of sacred significance: "to put heart into"); and dozens of others, Dunton-Downer reveals with clarity and humor how these linguistic artifacts embody the resilience, appeal, adoptability, and wild inclusiveness that English, through a series of historical accidents, gained on its road to worldwide reach. These words explain not only how English has managed to link our distant and often disparate pasts but also how it is propelling humankind to a future that we can, for the first time, talk about and shape in a language that now belongs to all of us: Global English"--Page 2 of cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 299-311) and index.
Table of contents: title: Global English. Robot ; Bikini ; Shampoo ; Jazz ; Cocktail ; Made in China; title: A family picture of English. Film ; Credit card ; lol ; Blog ; Disco ; Star; title: Made in Ænglisc. Business ; Parking ; T-shirt ; FREE! ; Bank ; STOP; title: Made in Englysshe. Check ; Penthouse ; Cookie ; Taxi! ; Job ; Fun; title: Lingua franca and English. Stress ; SAT ; Relax ; Safari ; Deluxe ; O.K.; title: Future global English is spoken here. Bye.