How the English Language Became the World's Language
July 26, 2010
McCrum explores why English has become dominant in the modern world, and, more significantly, how English is manipulated, reconceived, and negotiated by different cultures—and why. (according to the author) native English speakers no longer control the language. James Langton projects his crisp English accent with rhythm and command that keep listeners engaged, shifting dialects, accents, and vocal manipulations with ease. Listening to Langton's performance allows for a fuller understanding of the verbal differences analyzed in the book. A Norton hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 15).
March 15, 2010
Britannia may not rule, but it still presides over the world's discourse, according to this sketchy, triumphalist chronicle of the English language. McCrum (The Story of English
), associate editor of Britain's Observer,
surveys the latter-day apotheosis of English as the international language, observing Chinese English-language boot camps, Bangalore call centers, and the takeover of Britain's Man Booker prize by non-British novelists. But most of the book is a historical pageant of the English-speaking peoples as they assimilated, conquered, or enslaved foreigners and expropriated words and dialects under the leadership of statesmen/wordsmiths from King Alfred to Churchill and literary geniuses like Shakespeare and Twain. McCrum makes a pragmatic, happenstance case for the international popularity of English: the British Empire and American hegemony spread it around the planet, making it the obvious choice for a globalizing world's lingua franca. But he also advances a grander and less coherent brief for English as the language of individual freedom, democracy, and capitalism, contrasting its “contagious, adaptable, populist and subversive” spirit with the snobby elitism of French. That's a bit of language chauvinism that no linguistic analysis, especially one as cursory as McCrum's, can sustain.