Author: Robert Claiborne
Publisher: Crown
Published: 1983
Total Pages: 360
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Recounts a history of the English language from its Indo-European origins to the present.
Author: Tracy B. Strong
Publisher:
Published: 2019
Total Pages: 342
ISBN-13: 022662322X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"Tracy Strong explores the development of the concept of American citizenship and of what it means to belong to this country, beginning with the Puritans in the 17th century and continuing to the present day. He examines in detail the conflicts over what citizenship means as reflected in the writings and speeches of America's leading thinkers and leaders ranging from John Winthrop and Roger Williams, to Thomas Jefferson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Franklin Roosevelt, among others who have participated in our cultural and political debates. We see how the requirements and demands of citizenship have been discussed and better understand how groups are defined into and out of the American nation"--
Author: Christine Gilbert
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2016-05-17
Total Pages: 338
ISBN-13: 1592407927
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →One woman’s quest to learn Mandarin in Beijing, Arabic in Beirut, and Spanish in Mexico, with her young family along for the ride. Imagine negotiating for a replacement carburetor in rural Mexico with words you’re secretly pulling from a pocket dictionary. Imagine your two-year-old asking for more niunai at dinner—a Mandarin word for milk that even you don’t know yet. Imagine finding out that you’re unexpectedly pregnant while living in war-torn Beirut. With vivid and evocative language, Christine Gilbert takes us along with her into foreign lands, showing us what it’s like to make a life in an unfamiliar world—and in an unfamiliar tongue. Gilbert was a young mother when she boldly uprooted her family to move around the world, studying Mandarin in China, Arabic in Lebanon, and Spanish in Mexico, with her toddler son and all-American husband along for the ride.Their story takes us from Beijing to Beirut, from Cyprus to Chiang Mai—and also explores recent breakthroughs in bilingual brain mapping and the controversial debates happening in linguistics right now. Gilbert’s adventures abroad prove just how much language influences culture (and vice versa), and lead her to results she never expected. Mother Tongue is a fascinating and uplifting story about taking big risks for bigger rewards and trying to find meaning and happiness through tireless pursuit—no matter what hurdles may arise. It’s a treat for language enthusiasts and armchair travelers alike.
Author: Lincoln Kinnear Barnett
Publisher: New York : Knopf
Published: 1964
Total Pages: 362
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Author: Geoffrey Galt Harpham
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1996
Total Pages: 232
ISBN-13: 9780226316963
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Joseph Conrad has traditionally been seen as a master - a master mariner, master storyteller, master of the secrets of the human heart, master of fictional technique. Recently, however, these compliments have given way to charges that Conrad is complicit in the various masteries associated with racism, imperialism, and the patriarchy. In this book, Geoffrey Galt Harpham inquires not only into Conrad's work and reputation, but also into the idea of mastery as such.
Author: John H. McWhorter
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 264
ISBN-13: 9781592403950
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Why do we say "I am reading a catalog" instead of "I read a catalog"? Why do we say "do" at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, author McWhorter distills hundreds of years of lore i
Author: Wallis Wilde-Menozzi
Publisher: North Point Press
Published: 2020-03-17
Total Pages: 376
ISBN-13: 0374720851
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A probing and poetic examination of language, food, faith, and family attachment in Italian life through the eyes of an American who moved to Parma with her husband and family. In the 1980s, the American writer Wallis Wilde-Menozzi moved permanently with her Italian husband and her daughter to Parma, a sophisticated city in northern Italy, where he became a professor of biology. Her search for rootedness in the city that was to be her home introduced her to complexities in her identity as she migrated into another language and looked for links beyond the joys of Verdi, Correggio, and Parmesan cheese, which visitors have rightly extolled for centuries. The local resistance to change perceived as individualistic led Wilde-Menozzi to explore the pull and challenge of difference and discover the backbone she needed for artistic freedom. In Mother Tongue, Wilde-Menozzi offers stories of far-sighted lives, remarkable Parma men and remarkable women, including the Renaissance abbess Giovanna Piacenza, the fighting Donella Rossi Sanvitale, and her own indefatigable mother-in-law. Framed with a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Patricia Hampl, this classic on diversity and tolerance, family, faith, and food in Italy and the United States is at once timeless and timely, a “large, beautiful window into the intelligent, literate, reflective life of Italy” (Shirley Hazzard).
Author: Sol Steinmetz
Publisher: Random House Reference
Published: 2012-01-11
Total Pages: 397
ISBN-13: 0307496465
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →If time travelers from the nineteenth century dropped in on us, our strange vocabulary would shock them just as much as our TVs, cars, and computers. Society changes, and so does its word stock. The Life of Language reveals how pop culture, business, technology, and other forces of globalization expand and enrich the English language, forming thousands of new words every year. In this fascinating and jargon-free guide, lexicographers Kipfer and Steinmetz reconstruct the births of thousands of words, including infantries, poz, mobs, Soho, dinks, choo choos, frankenfoods, LOL, narcs and perps. · A word lover’s guide to etymology, written in a fun, informal, and accessible style · An excellent resource for vocabulary building; a word's root helps readers understand its meaning · Beautifully packaged paperback with French flaps From the Trade Paperback edition.