The Adventure of English cover art

The Adventure of English

The Biography of a Language

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The Adventure of English

By: Melvyn Bragg
Narrated by: Melvyn Bragg
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About this listen

 English is the collective work of millions of people throughout the ages. It is democratic, ever-changing, and ingenious in its assimilation of other cultures. English runs through the heart of world finance, medicine, and the Internet, and it is understood by around 2.2 billion people across the world. Yet it was very nearly wiped out in its early years.

In this audiobook, Melvyn Bragg shows us the remarkable story of the English language, from its beginnings as a minor guttural Germanic dialect to its position today as a truly established global language. Embracing elements of Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, Hindi, and Gullah, this 1,500-year story covers a huge range of countries and peoples.

The Adventure of English is not only an enthralling story of power, religion, and trade, but also the story of people and how their day-to-day lives shaped and continue to change the extraordinary language that is English.

©2003 Melvyn Bragg (P)2003 Hodder and Stoughton Audiobooks Linguistics Social Sciences Middle Ages

Critic Reviews

"Compelling and charmingly personal." ( Publishers Weekly)
All stars
Most relevant  
very good, surpassingly comprehensive for an abridged version, but i bought this by mistake, the unabridged version is also available, performance is good on this one, but not good enough to be worth missing 80% of the content. unless you particularly want the short version.

get the Unabridged version

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