Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling
Sep 2008 · Harper Collins
2.5star
2 reviews
Ebook
226
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
shoppingmode70% price drop on Nov 8
About this ebook
“A funny and fact-filled look at our astoundingly inconsistent written language, from Shakespeare to spell-check.” —St. Petersburg Times
Righting the Mother Tongue tells the cockamamie story of English spelling. When did ghost acquire its silent ‘h’? Will cyberspace kill the one in rhubarb? And was it really rocket scientists who invented spell-check?
Seeking to untangle the twisted story of English spelling, David Wolman takes us on a wordly adventure from English battlefields to Google headquarters. Along the way, he pickets with spelling reformers outside the national spelling bee, visits the town in Belgium, not England, where the first English books were printed, and takes a road trip with the boss at Merriam-Webster Inc. The journey is punctuated by spelling battles waged by the likes of Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster, Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie, and the members of today’s Simplified Spelling Society.
Rich with history, pop culture, curiosity, and humor, Righting the Mother Tongue explores how English spelling came to be, traces efforts to mend the code, and imagines the shape of tomorrow’s words.
“Lively, informative . . . prov[es] that the English spelling system is a hopeless tangle of French, Dutch, Latin, German and much, much more and really makes no sense at all.” —Portland Tribune
“An engaging ramble through our orthographic thickets.” —The Boston Globe
“Sprightly history that sensibly balances the merits of standardization against the forces for freedom.” —Kirkus Reviews
Righting the Mother Tongue tells the cockamamie story of English spelling. When did ghost acquire its silent ‘h’? Will cyberspace kill the one in rhubarb? And was it really rocket scientists who invented spell-check?
Seeking to untangle the twisted story of English spelling, David Wolman takes us on a wordly adventure from English battlefields to Google headquarters. Along the way, he pickets with spelling reformers outside the national spelling bee, visits the town in Belgium, not England, where the first English books were printed, and takes a road trip with the boss at Merriam-Webster Inc. The journey is punctuated by spelling battles waged by the likes of Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster, Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie, and the members of today’s Simplified Spelling Society.
Rich with history, pop culture, curiosity, and humor, Righting the Mother Tongue explores how English spelling came to be, traces efforts to mend the code, and imagines the shape of tomorrow’s words.
“Lively, informative . . . prov[es] that the English spelling system is a hopeless tangle of French, Dutch, Latin, German and much, much more and really makes no sense at all.” —Portland Tribune
“An engaging ramble through our orthographic thickets.” —The Boston Globe
“Sprightly history that sensibly balances the merits of standardization against the forces for freedom.” —Kirkus Reviews
Ratings and reviews
2.5
2 reviews
About the author
DAVID WOLMAN is a Contributing Editor at Outside. He has written for the Wired, the New York Times, New Yorker, Nature, and many other publications, and his work has been anthologized in the Best American Science and Nature Writing series. He is the author of The End of Money, Righting the Mother Tongue, and A Left-Hand Turn Around the World. David lives in Portland, Oregon, with his family.
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
