Linguistics - Historical & Comparative
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The Little Book of Foreign Swear Words
$9.99 Read moreThis is the ultimate guide to swear words from around the globe. When you want to get your point across abroad, there’s only one way to do it: by swearing your ass off!
Ever been lost for words abroad- Series: Little Book of
- Author: Finch, Sid
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 96
- Publish Date: October 04 2022
- ISBN10: 1787837696
- Language: English
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The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way
$17.99 Add to cart“Vastly informative and vastly entertaining…A scholarly and fascinating book.” —Los Angeles Times
With dazzling wit and astonishing insight, Bill Bryson explores the remarkable history, eccentricit
- Author: Bryson, Bill
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 320
- Publish Date: October 23, 2001
- ISBN10: 0380715430
- Language: English
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Bookish Words & Their Surprising Stories
$25.00 Add to cartTravel through time with words that have shaped the trajectory of the English language across centuries.
The world of books has played a striking role in the history of English vocabulary. “Book” itse
- Author: Crystal, David
- Binding: Hardcover
- Page Count: 176
- Publish Date: June 20 2025
- ISBN10: 1851246517
- Language: English
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Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages
$29.95 Add to cartAn enthralling tour of the world’s rarest and most endangered languages
Languages and cultures are becoming increasingly homogenous, with the resulting loss of a rich linguistic tapestry reflecting un- Author: Gibb, Lorna
- Binding: Hardcover
- Page Count: 352
- Publish Date: April 22 2025
- ISBN10: 0691274177
- Language: English
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Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York
$20.00 Add to cartFrom the co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance, a captivating portrait of contemporary New York City through six speakers of little-known and overlooked languages, diving into the incredible
- Author: Perlin, Ross
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 432
- Publish Date: February 11 2025
- ISBN10: 0802164196
- Language: English
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Gobsmacked!: The British Invasion of American English
$24.95 Add to cartA spot-on guide to how and why Americans have become so bloody keen on Britishisms–for good or ill
The British love to complain that words and phrases imported from America–from French fries to Awes- Author: Yagoda, Ben
- Binding: Hardcover
- Page Count: 288
- Publish Date: September 24 2024
- ISBN10: 0691262292
- Language: English
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The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language
$18.99 Add to cart“An essay in origins … as theoretical as Hawking and Gorst in trying to see into the deep past. McWhorter is a clear and witty writer.”– Harper’s
In the first book written for the layperson about th
- Author: McWhorter, John
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 352
- Publish Date: January 07 2003
- ISBN10: 006052085X
- Language: English
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Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages
$21.00 Add to cartA New York Times Editor’s Choice
The debate is ages old: Where does language come from? Is it an art
An Economist Best Book of 2010
A Financial Times Best Book of 2010
A Library Journal Best Book of 2010- Author: Deutscher, Guy
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 320
- Publish Date: August 30 2011
- ISBN10: 0312610491
- Language: English
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Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States
$19.99 Read more“A literate exploration of why we use–or mangle–our native tongue.”–USA Today
Bill Bryson celebrates America’s magnificent offspring in the book that reveals once and for all how a dusty western ha
- Author: Bryson, Bill
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 480
- Publish Date: October 23 2001
- ISBN10: 0380713810
- Language: English
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The Language Game: How Improvisation Created Language and Changed the World
$30.00 Read moreForget the language instinct–this is the story of how we make up language as we go
Language is perhaps humanity’s most astonishing capacity–and one that remains poorly understood.- Author: Christiansen, Morten H.
- Binding: Hardcover
- Page Count: 304
- Publish Date: February 22 2022
- ISBN10: 1541674987
- Language: English
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Whose Language Is English?
$28.00 Add to cartAn exhilarating new account of the English language, from British colonialism to the age of social media, emphasizing dynamism and democratization
Whose language is English? Although we often think o- Author: Kiaer, Jieun
- Binding: Hardcover
- Page Count: 264
- Publish Date: September 17 2024
- ISBN10: 0300264054
- Language: English
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Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States
$19.99 Add to cart“A literate exploration of why we use–or mangle–our native tongue.”–USA Today
Bill Bryson celebrates America’s magnificent offspring in the book that reveals once and for all how a dusty western ha
- Author: Bryson, Bill
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 480
- Publish Date: October 23 2001
- ISBN10: 0380713810
- Language: English
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The Story of Yiddish: How a Mish-Mosh of Languages Saved the Jews
$17.99 Add to cartA delightfully unconventional tale of a people, their place in the world, and the fascinating language that held them together.
Yiddish is an unlikely survivor of the ages, much like the Jews themselve
- Author: Karlen, Neal
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 336
- Publish Date: March 31 2009
- ISBN10: 0060837128
- Language: English
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The English Language: A Very Short Introduction
$12.99 Add to cartThe English language is spoken by more than a billion people throughout the world. But where did English come from? And how has it evolved into the language used today?
In this Very Short Introduction- Series: Very Short Introductions
- Author: Horobin, Simon
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 152
- Publish Date: March 25 2018
- ISBN10: 0198709250
- Language: English
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Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language, Revised and Expanded Edition
$22.95 Add to cartSeth Lerer tells a masterful history of the English language from the age of Beowulf to the rap of Eminem. Many have written about the evolution of grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary, but only Ler… [more below]
- Author: Lerer, Seth
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 352
- Publish Date: August 25 2015
- ISBN10: 0231174470
- Language: English
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Yooper Talk: Dialect as Identity in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula
$17.95 Add to cartThe Upper Peninsula of Michigan–known as “the U P”–is historically, geographically, and culturally distinct. Struggles over land, labor, and language during the last 150 years have shaped the variet… [more below]
- Series: Languages and Folklore of Upper Midwest
- Author: Remlinger, Kathryn A.
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 176
- Publish Date: August 13 2019
- ISBN10: 0299312542
- Language: English
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The Story of Spanish
$21.00 Add to cartThe authors of The Story of French are back with a new linguistic history of the Spanish language and its progress around the globe.
Just how did a dialect spoken by a handful of shepherds in Northern- Author: Nadeau, Jean-Benoit
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 448
- Publish Date: July 15 2014
- ISBN10: 1250049040
- Language: English
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Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don’t Rhyme–And Other Oddities of the English Language
$23.99 Add to cartMaybe you’ve been speaking English all your life, or maybe you learned it later on. But whether you use it just well enough to get your daily business done, or you’re an expert with a red pen who neve… [more below]
- Author: Okrent, Arika
- Binding: Hardcover
- Page Count: 272
- Publish Date: July 01 2021
- ISBN10: 0197539408
- Language: English
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Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing
$19.98 Add to cartAlmost everyone swears, or worries about not swearing, from the two year-old who has just discovered the power of potty mouth to the grandma who wonders why every other word she hears is obscene. Whet… [more below]
- Author: Mohr, Melissa
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 352
- Publish Date: May 01 2016
- ISBN10: 019049168X
- Language: English
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The Deorhord: An Old English Bestiary
$24.95 Add to cartAn entertaining tour of Old English words for animals, from the author of The Wordhord: Daily Life in Old English, which Neil Gaiman called “a marvelous book”
Many of the animals we encounter in ever- Author: Videen, Hana
- Binding: Hardcover
- Page Count: 352
- Publish Date: February 20 2024
- ISBN10: 0691260001
- Language: English
