Historical & Comparative
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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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The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots
$24.99 Add to cartThe American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots traces over 13,000 words, representing nearly 1,350 basic roots, to their origins in Proto-Indo-European, the prehistoric ancestor of English. T
- Author: Watkins, Calvert
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 192
- Publish Date: September 13 2011
- ISBN10: 054754944X
- Language: English
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Hardly Harmless Drudgery: A 500-Year Pictorial History of the Lexicographic Geniuses, Sciolists, Plagiarists, and Obsessives Who Defined the Eng
$65.00 Add to cart“A delight”–Booklist
A richly illustrated historical account of English-language dictionaries, and the people who made them, from the dawn of printing to the present day. Dictionaries are repositorie- Author: Garner, Bryan A.
- Binding: Hardcover
- Page Count: 520
- Publish Date: April 30 2024
- ISBN10: 1567928072
- 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 Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code
$19.99 Add to cartIn the tradition of Simon Winchester and Dava Sobel, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code tells one of the most intriguing stories in the history of language, masterfully bl
- Author: Fox, Margalit
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 384
- Publish Date: April 15 2014
- ISBN10: 0062228862
- Language: English
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I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World
$19.99 Add to cartFor lovers of language and fans of Blink and Freakonomics, New York Times bestselling author James Geary offers this fascinating look at metaphors and their influence in every aspect of our lives, fro
- Author: Geary, James
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 320
- Publish Date: December 13 2013
- ISBN10: 0061710296
- 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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What’s Your Pronoun?: Beyond He and She
$25.95 Add to cartLike trigger warnings and gender-neutral bathrooms, pronouns are sparking a national debate, prompting new policies in schools, workplaces, even prisons, about what pronouns to use. Colleges ask stude
- Author: Baron, Dennis
- Binding: Hardcover
- Page Count: 304
- Publish Date: January 21 2020
- ISBN10: 1631496042
- 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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Talking Back, Talking Black: Truths about America’s Lingua Franca
$17.99 Read more“Superb.” —Steven Pinker
“An explanation, a defense, and, most heartening, a celebration. . . . McWhorter demonstrates the ‘legitimacy’ of Black English by uncovering its complexity and sophistication… [more below]
- Author: McWhorter, John
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 192
- Publish Date: September 11 2018
- ISBN10: 1942658583
- Language: English
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Words from Hell: Unearthing the Darkest Secrets of English Etymology
$14.99 Add to cartThe English language is where words go to be tortured and mutilated into unrecognizable shadows of their former selves. It’s where Latin, Greek, and Germanic roots are shredded apart and stitched unce… [more below]
- Author: Zafarris, Jess
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 352
- Publish Date: September 24 2024
- ISBN10: 1399808214
- 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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A Date with Language
$40.00 Read moreA collection of 366 facts about language to enliven each day of the year.
In this ingenious and diverse collection of 366 stories, events, and facts about language, David Crystal presents a selection- Author: Crystal, David
- Binding: Hardcover
- Page Count: 416
- Publish Date: September 16 2023
- ISBN10: 1851246118
- Language: English
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French, Cajun, Creole, Houma: A Primer on Francophone Louisiana
$29.95 Add to cartIn recent years, ethnographers have recognized south Louisiana as home to perhaps the most complex rural society in North America. More than a dozen French-speaking immigrant groups have been identifi
- Author: Brasseaux, Carl a.
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 174
- Publish Date: September 02 2021
- ISBN10: 0807176966
- Language: English
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Ruth: A Guide to Reading Biblical Hebrew (an Intermediate Hebrew Reader’s Edition with Exegetical and Syntactical Aids)
$43.75 Read moreMaintain your Hebrew.
Too often, a former Hebrew student is a lapsed Hebrew student. The paradigms, the syntactical forms, and even the alphabet can be hard to recall. The way to make Hebrew stick, li
- Series: Guide to Reading Biblical Hebrew
- Author: Howell, Adam J.
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 320
- Publish Date: June 01 2022
- ISBN10: 1683595572
- 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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What’s Your Pronoun?: Beyond He and She
$16.95 Read moreHeralded as “required reading” (Geoff Nunberg) and “the book” (Anne Fadiman) for anyone interested in the conversation swirling around gender-neutral and nonbinary pronouns, What’s Your Pronoun? is a … [more below]
- Author: Baron, Dennis
- Binding: Paperback
- Page Count: 320
- Publish Date: January 12 2021
- ISBN10: 1631498711
- Language: English
