The Mother Tongue (42 page)

Linguistic Atlas of England,
120

Linguistic Atlas of New England,

111

Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada,
111

lip reading, 95

lipograms, 255, 260

Lithuanian, 25

Ljung, Magnus, 202

Lloyd George, David, 66

Logonomia Anglica
(Gil), 149

London, 50, 243

dialects of, 57–59, 60, 62, 92, 98, 118, 119–20, 187–88, 266–67

East End of, 266–68

Lord's Prayer, 59, 61

Los Angeles Times,
259

The Lost Art of Profanity
(Johnson), 248

Louis XIV, king of France, 152

Louisiana, 123–24, 187

Love's Labour's Lost
(Shakespeare), 256

Love's Labour's Won
(Shakespeare), 65

Lowth, Robert, 153–54, 156

Luorawetlan languages, 15–16

Maintenance of the Purity of the French Language, 206

Malay, 208

Malory, Thomas, 138, 147

Manx, 26, 41

Marlowe, Christopher, 136

Marryat, Frederick, 246

The Mayor of Casterbridge
(Hardy), 81

McCormick, Robert R., 142

McCrum, Robert, 57, 148, 161–62

McKnight, G. H., 164

memory, 163

Mencken, H. L., 113, 141, 169, 188, 274

Menke, Hubertus, 42

Merriam, Charles, 172–73

Merriam, George, 172–73

Merriam-Webster International Dictionary,
72, 173

metanalysis, 63

metaphasis, 262–63

metaphors, mixed, 64

Mexican, 179

Middle Ages, 23, 74, 76, 77, 121, 221, 224, 259

Middle English, 53–63, 96, 98

Milton, John, 63, 68, 79

Minor, W. C., 174–75

The Miracle of Language
(Laird), 4, 111

Mitterrand, François, 206

Moldavian, 34

Monde, Le, 206

Montagu, Ashley, 240, 241, 248

More, Sir Thomas, 66, 79

Morley, John David, 210

Morse code, 127

Moss, Norman, 192

Mulcaster, Richard, 66

Müller, Max, 162

Mundus Novus, 180

Murphy, John, 236

Murray, James Augustus Henry, 141, 173–76

Mussolini, Benito, 37

My Fair Lady
(Lerner and Loewe), 142

Na-Dene, 16

names, 218–38

American, 224, 226–28, 231–34, 237–38

anglicizing of, 227, 231–35

British, 100, 218–26, 228–31, 236–38

business use of, 235–38

corruption and modification of, 63, 223, 227–29

of days, 44

distinctiveness of, 220–21, 222, 229, 232–34

family, 218–20, 223–28

of flora and fauna, 52, 83, 160–61, 247

of foods, 52, 83

multiple spellings of, 136, 176, 178, 228–29

occupations reflected in, 223–24

origins of, 220–27

pejorative use of, 187

pronunciation of, 92–93, 99–100, 218–20, 229–32

spelling of, 226–29

See also
place names

National Education Association,

141

National Transportation Safety Board, 249

Natural History,
16

Neanderthal man, 12–15

Neighbours,
276

Neo-Melanesian, 20–21, 200

Neolithic peoples, 14–15, 24

The New English Dictionary on Historical Principles,
173–76

New World Indian languages, 16–17, 63, 74, 178, 182, 231

New York
Evening Post,
192

New York Times,
4, 155, 158, 165, 210, 249, 254, 273

New York Times Magazine,
249

New York Times Manual of Style and Usage,
155, 249

New York
World,
253

The New Yorker,
93

Newton, Isaac, 66, 79

nicknames, 63, 234

Nights with Uncle Remus
(Harris), 124

Nixon, Richard M., 216, 249

Norman Conquest, 51, 54, 223, 228, 242

Norman French, 51–53

Normandy, 51–52, 54

Normans, 51–56, 74, 133–34, 228, 229

Norn, 50

Norse, 51

North, Frederick, Lord, 183

Northumbria, 46, 48–49

Notes on a Money Unit for the United States
(Jefferson), 180

Notes on the State of Virginia
(Jefferson), 191

nouns, 6–7, 47, 64, 99–100, 146

definitions of, 146

multiple spellings for, 130, 135, 175–76, 228–29

verbs as, 6–7, 64, 90, 101, 146, 191, 192

Novum Organum
(Bacon), 66

number, 29, 48

Nunberg, Geoffrey D., 272

O'Brien, Conor Cruise, 40

obscenities, 173, 239–43, 245, 248, 250–51

Observer
(London), 4, 198, 250, 274–75

Odell, Allan, 261–62

Ogden, C. K., 213

“O.K.,” 181–82, 242

Old English, 48–54, 56–57, 62, 155

modern English vs., 47, 72, 98, 241

Old Italian, 74

Old Norse, 51

onomasties, 223

onomatopoeia, 17, 90

The Origin of English Place Names
(Reaney), 228

Orm, 135

orthoepy, 89, 104, 129, 131, 178, 220

Orton, Harold, 119–20

Oubykh, 32

OuLiPo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle), 260

Our Language
(Potter), 49, 106, 195

Our Marvelous Native Tongue
(Claiborne), 117, 148

Our Own Words
(Dohan), 79, 178

Oxford English Dictionary
(OED), 2, 4, 11, 57, 70, 72, 160, 173–76, 189, 217, 249, 274

The Oxford Guide to Word Games
(Augarde), 255

Oxford University, 3, 55, 58, 119, 184, 262–63

palindromes, 127, 256–57, 260

Paris, 51, 52–53, 56

Parliament, British, 55, 192–93, 245, 247

Parti Québécois, 36

participles, 149, 204

parts of speech, 135–37.
See also specific parts of speech

Partridge, Eric, 157

Patrick, Saint, 45
n

Pei, Mario, 28, 31, 34, 63, 75, 80–81, 115, 117, 130, 162, 180, 226, 249

Peking, 89

Pennsylvania Dutch, 185–86, 235

Pentagon, 211

Pepys, Samuel, 220

Perec, Georges, 259–60

Persian, 22, 23

Peterborough Chronicle,
54

Philadelphia Inquirer,
250

phonetics, 89–91, 93

phonies, 87

pictographs, 126, 129

Pictures from the Water Trade
(Morley), 210

pidgin languages, 20–22

Pierce, John R., 91

pilgrims, 177

Pippa Passes
(Browning), 73–74

Pitman, Isaac, 140

place names

American, 93, 100, 178, 179–80

British, 46, 50, 221–24, 225, 228–31

etymology of, 46, 50, 220–23

family names based on, 225

old pronunciation surviving in, 99–100

of pubs, 220–23

slurring and truncating of, 92–93

of streets, 220, 243

Platt, James, 174

plosives, 94

plurals, 21, 59, 60–62, 73, 156, 202

poetry, English, 41, 48, 57, 98–99, 100–101, 255–56

Point, Le, 207

Polish, 2, 203, 216

Polk, James K., 228

polysemy, 70–72

Pope, Alexander, 100

Portuguese, 25, 26, 34, 193, 201, 209

potato famine of 1845, 40, 185

Potter, Simeon, 47, 49, 57, 80, 90, 106, 131

predicates, 146

prefixes, 83–85

prepositions, 153–54

Press Council, 250

Priestley, Joseph, 151

Principia
(Newton), 66

printing press, invention of, 136–37

pronouns, 9, 47, 48, 51, 61, 63

pronunciation, 7, 8, 87–104

British vs. American, 171–72,

188

duration and resonance in, 90

eighteenth-century, 104, 112

emphasis in, 91, 95, 101–2, 227–28

evolution of, 95–104

fashion and class distinctions in, 103, 113–15, 116
n
, 118–19

foreigners' difficulty with, 87–88, 114, 133

historic rhymes as clue to, 98–99, 100–101

historic vs. modern, 104, 171–72

impact of literature on, 96, 98–99, 100–101

inconsistency in, 89, 100–101

letters intruding into, 91–92

misspellings as clue to, 99

of names, 92–93, 99–100, 218–20, 229–32

nineteenth-century, 103, 113

phonetic elements of, 93, 95,

135

rate of change in, 96

relationship of spelling to, 89–92, 99–103, 132, 134, 144, 218–20, 229–32

shifting vowel sounds in, 97–101, 104

slurred and truncated, 92–93, 95–96, 103

sound combinations in, 90, 91

suppressed sounds in, 95, 96–97, 99, 113, 138–39, 230

survival of, 99–100, 101–2, 103

syllabic values in, 92–93, 101–2

unconscious factors in, 91–92

vocal pitch and, 89–90

words rendered by multiple, 89, 144, 227–28

See also
diction; speech

Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue
(Swift), 150

Proto-Indo-European language, 16–17, 24

publishing, 137

pubs, 220–23

puns, 99, 245, 255

Puttenham, George, 58

Pygmalion
(Shaw), 118, 119, 142

Pyles, Thomas, 110, 169–70, 191, 246, 251

Quayle, J. Danforth, 273

Quebec, 36, 271

Quirk, Randolph, 3, 184, 217

radicals, 126–27

Ramsay, David, 183

The Random House Dictionary of the English Language,
158, 160, 165, 249

Rawlinson, Henry, 23

Read, Allen Walker, 182

Reagan, Ronald W., 217, 258

Reaney, P. H., 228

rebuses, 256, 259

Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy,
137

“Red Pants” (Sebastian), 81

Renaissance, 48–49

rhymes, 98–99, 100–101, 266–68

Richard II, king of England, 221

Richard II
(Shakespeare), 245

Richard III, king of England, 222

Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal, 150, 166

Richter, Alan, 254

riddles, 256, 259

Roget's Thesaurus,
4

Roman Catholic Church, 34, 55

Roman Empire

decline and fall of, 28, 46

invasion and occupation of England by, 43–46, 121, 133, 221, 229, 242

Romance languages, 5, 26–28, 47, 96, 276

Romanian, 26, 28, 34

Romansh, 32–33

Roosevelt, Theodore, 141

Royal Society for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy, 150

Ruhlen, Merrit, 16

runes, 44, 133

Russian, 4, 30, 34, 215

S4C, 39

Safire, William, 130, 152, 249, 260

Sanskrit, 22–23, 25

Saxons, 44, 95, 167, 229

Scandinavian languages, 25–26, 34, 49–52

A Scheme for a New Alphabet and a Reformed Mode of Spelling
(Franklin), 140

Schlegel, Friedrich von, 23

Schleyer, Johann Martin, 211–12

schwa, 87, 93

Scientific American,
19

Scotland, 26, 39–41, 43, 117

Highland dialect of.
See
Gaelic, Scottish

Lowland dialect of, 122

Scots, 122

Scrabble, 254

scribes, 61, 133–34

Sea Islands, 123–25, 187

Seashore, R. H., 163

Seaspeak, 214

Sebastian, Robert M., 81

sentences, 146

ambiguous, 264

length of, 168

prepositional endings to, 153–54

Serbo-Croatian, 34, 181, 203

Shakespeare, William, 228, 262

authorship question and, 65, 256

death of, 65, 66, 245

language of, 59, 60, 61–62, 64–66, 73, 80, 96, 97, 100, 121, 154, 187–88, 191, 217, 245, 255

lost plays of, 65

multiple spellings for name of, 135–36, 176, 228

puns of, 99, 245, 255

vocabulary size of, 161

words and phrases coined by, 64–65, 78–79

works of, 63–64, 65, 80, 136, 187–88, 245, 256

Shaw, George Bernard, 41, 79, 118–19, 142

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 262

Shetland Islands, 50

Shipley, Joseph T., 161

A Short Introduction to English Grammar
(Lowth), 153

shorthand, 140, 142

Sidney, Philip, 147–48

Simon and Schuster, 253

A Simplified Alphabet
(Twain),

140

Simplified Spelling Board, 141–42

slang, 110, 116–17, 190, 195–96, 213, 240, 251

rhyming of, 266–68

slavery, 185

Smith, Logan Pearsall, 190

Smith, Thomas, 149

Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society
(Trudgill), 35, 114

Soviet Union, 33–34, 37, 216–17

Spain, 54, 270

Spanish, 2, 4, 5, 26, 34, 35, 46, 179, 201, 269–72, 276

Spectator,
40, 195, 250

speech

analysis of, 91, 94

children's mastery of, 17–20

conversational speed of, 94

cultural conventions and, 30–31, 103–4

dictation of, 95

inefficient process of, 95

laxness and imprecision in, 92–94, 95–96, 103

physiology of, 13–14, 91, 94, 98, 118–19

rules of, 17–18

slipups in, 95

words and sentences run together in, 92–94, 103

speech impediments, 118–19, 124

spelling, 126–44

attempts at reform of, 138–44, 170–71

British vs. American, 100, 143, 170–72, 175–76, 194