A01=Lane Greene
Author_Lane Greene
Category=CBX
Daniel Everett
Don't Sleep There Are Snakes
Economist
eq_bestseller
eq_dictionaries-language-reference
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Esperanto
Grammar
Grammar Grouches
How language Began
Language
Language Laws
Linguistics
Loglan
Lojban
Neville Gwynne
Robert Lane Greene
Speech
You Are What You Speak
Product details
- ISBN 9781781258071
- Weight: 180g
- Dimensions: 128 x 196mm
- Publication Date: 01 Aug 2019
- Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Language is a wild animal: rough, ambiguous, inconsistent in countless ways. But that just makes it all the more tempting to tame it. Many have tried, from sticklers for supposedly correct grammar to inventors of supposedly perfect languages; from software engineers working on machine translation to governments that see language management as politics by another means. But when you enter the lair of a wild beast, you can be lucky to escape with your wits.
Join Lane Greene on a journey of discovery into the deep strangeness of language. Learn why grammar rules can never capture the extraordinary variety of ordinary usage. See what happens when you try to design a language that really makes sense. Find out why, for all the talk of decline in English, no language in recorded history has ever gone to the dogs, or ever could. And learn the fate of those bold individuals who, through heroism or ignorance, ventured to teach their tongue some new tricks.
Lane Greene writes the Johnson column about language for The Economist. His book about the politics of language, You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity, was published by Delacorte Press in 2011.
