The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language

I learnt of this book through the results of a search on English language history books, and I bought it along with Professor's David Crystal's The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. This may sound naïve, but the moment I unwrapped the parcel I kinda felt that I'd got something worth the money I had spent, which was not a small amount, as I live in South America. I'd never reviewed any purchase I did before, Amazon's or another online store's, but I just finished Mr. Bragg's book, and I felt I just couldn't let through the opportunity to say how pleasant were the reading moments this book provided me these last few weeks, and it would be a shame if I didn't do at least a meagre effort to get more people have their share of this priceless treasure.

I am Brazilian, and as you probably know the language spoken in my country is Portuguese. I've got this little book on Portuguese language history here, and it is sad that, besides being a very short one and dealing mostly with the linguistic questions (which doesn't devaluate the book at all, by being rather technical talking, but sure keeps it from being more interesting and accessible to a wider public) and not having even been written by a Portuguese speaker, was the only one I could find. On the other hand, search Amazon.com for English language history and you'll get tons of results, which shows how fond of their mother tongue the English speakers are.
And if that was my first (and good) impression on the amount of the results of my search, I became simply astonished as the pages went by while reading the book. Mr. Braggs speaks of English language not in a romanticised way, not as a close friend, not in a passionately (and eventually suspicious and annoying, as it uses to be when it comes to passionate descriptions) way, but with deep respect, permeated with kindness, and it goes without saying from the first to the last page that Mr. Melvyn is really enjoying telling people all he got to learn about his beloved subject, and feels glad that he is cooperating somehow to create a rather personal bonding between the reader and the language in which he wrote its own story. You all but can see English language as a typical adventure story hero: someone who's got feelings, sometimes uncertainty, others ambition, greed, joy, arrogance, someone who goes after his goals. English language shows up like a palpable subject, like the old (dating back to hundreds of years ago) lady who sits beside us on the bus, on her way not to the confort of her house, but in search for some good fun on the neighbourhood, and maybe beyond.
I am not an English native speaker, and you who are reading may find many grammar or vocabulary mistakes in this review, of which I am not well aware myself, but that doesn't worries me much, as Mr. Bragg conveys rather conforting news to us who use English as a second language: we've got a very important role in the next chapters of this never-ending English adventure. I confess I am very proud of it, and it'd be an honour if our part on this story will be told by such a good storyteller as Mr. Bragg.

Those who love history viewed from the armchair will glory in this gem. Yes, it's long and highly detailed, but that's actually a plus. It is definitely worth the expense, so go ahead and order--you know you want to.

In fact, this would be a great Christmas gift for anyone with a bend toward self-education.

A well-written and entertaining history of the development of the English language. Great for a vacation read. This is a must-have book for anyone who likes to quibble over grammar, spelling, and usage or who wonders how this crazy language came to be.

Readers of the "The Story of English" or David Crystal's "Encyclopedia of English" will not find anything new here, but like Bill Bryson's "Mother Tongue", this volume is very readable and somewhat more substantial than Bryson's effort. I would recommend it as an entertaining read for anyone who wants to know how English developed.

Melvin Bragg is the somewhat notorious want-to-know-it-all host of the BBC4 show "In Our Time" that tries to have intelligent expositions on history, science, the arts and philosophy mainly, but not always, with an eye towards the past. In the areas where I have some knowledge, I know he -- and less excusably his guests -- get lost in the weeds quite often which makes me wonder about his scholarship generally. His weakest suit seems modern sciences.

The book covers the time from proto-English to contemporary world English admirably, tho at times it seems more of a hymn of praise (with verses repeated) than a study. An interesting revelation for me was that Elizabethan writers where well aware of the mutability of language since for them the language of Chaucer, then only two hundred years old, was difficult to read. They saw the writing on the wall: nothing lasts. Shakespeare's lines "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see/ So long lives this (poem) and this (poem) gives life to thee" are ironic since he's knows that nothing will last and 'thee' by then was archaic.

Melvin is a dyed-in-the-wool Englishman writing about English. He praises English for being adaptive and inclusive (such as with the wealth of infused French) and he is contradictorily congratulatory when English stubbornly refuses to admit words (as it did with Celtic). When English is late in a development, he praises that. When it is early, he praises that too.

Other characteristics that he trumpets seem products of any language that obtains a written form.

Being, I assume, an Anglican he sees the evil Catholic Church suppress an English bible and sees Henry the Eighth as a hero of the language, tho I would place equally blame for the cruelty on both church and state. The big, long lasting battles of any language are between the elite and the vulgar, the rulers and the ruled, stability and decay, proper and improper. Since he so well chronicles these battles, I'm surprised that he didn't see the battle between Catholic authority and vernacular bible as just another English battle with itself.

I quibble with strange uses of punctuation that obscure the flow of sentences and with obvious editing lapses, such as lists of words that have repeats.

The book is worth a read as long as you realize that it is an adventure seen thru the prism of Melvin's mind.