biography of the english language

I announced new online classes as well as the next round of classes and news about my teaching schedule for 2014.

For Writers:

• I discussed how to write in order to have an impact on the reader and made some observations about collaborations.
• Having trouble getting a non-SF reader to enjoy your favorite SF book? This may explain why.
• Charles Coleman Finlay talks about the slush pile for his guest editor issue of the Magazine of F&SF.

I talked about these books:

• Classic feminist text Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her by Susan Griffin
• Poetry collection The Essential Rumi, translated and arranged by Coleman Barks
• Nonfiction book A Biography of the English Language by C.M. Millward
• New space opera novel Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
• Classic animal fantasy novel Watership Down by Richard Adams

Time Wasters!

• A review of several books about the OWS movement talks intelligently about the history and implications of the movement.
• Scientists discover new poems from Sappho.
• G. Willow Wilson will be writing the Ms. Marvel comic.
• How moles dig. Because you always wanted to know.
• Some absolutely stunning photographs by Russian photographer Elena Shumilova of her children and farm animals.

Interesting Social Media Links

• A piece I did for the SFWA blog on Shelfari.
• Not social media related, really. but if you are working on the Internet, I strongly recommend two-factor authentication.

This video can be read as an inspiration for writers:

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What:There’s a t-shirt that reads “English is a language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary.” In A Biography of the English Language, Millward presents some of this complicated history of the English language, first talking about what a language is, along with basics of phonology and writing before moving into Indo-European, Old English (the sage of the arrival of the English, the Christianization of England, and various Viking invasions), Middle English, Early Modern English, and then the array of recent forces shaping our language: the printing press, the industrial revolution, colonization, the codification of grammar, and more. It finishes up with present day English, at least as present day as a book written in 1989 can be. I should note that, looking at Amazon, the book is expensive as heck. I suspect any thorough history of the English language will do as well, but this book is VERY thorough. I bet it’s also available through libraries.

Who:Read this if you are a writer who likes to know what’s built into the words you’re using, what they say about their circumstances as well as what resonances they add for the knowledgeable. Read it if you love the minutiae of language, all the little “who would have thought” and “Although unlikely” facts that get seeded into long and drifty conversations, like the fact that Indo-European had three numbers: singular, plural, and dual.

Why: Read this so you can use words both more efficiently and more artfully. SO you know how the literary tradition you are working for and against, bound inextricably within, has been affected by linguistic change and created its own pressures to change in turn.

When: Read this when going among bores, for it will arm you with facts with which any recitation of X-Files plots or sports trivia can be met. Read this when you want something a little academic, with that cleansing flavor of self-improvement that the scrub of dry details can bring. Read it when you’re cramming for a test that involves volcabulary.

Where and how: Read this sporadically, tucking facts away, or with a notebook in hand. Read it for a class that takes you through centuries of linguistic change, showing you how history is tucked into every Vocabulary lesson.

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