Shakespeare and the Origins of English

What existed before there was a subject known as English? How did English eventually come about? Focusing specifically on Shakespeare's role in the origins of the subject, Neil Rhodes addresses the evolution of English from the early modern period up to the late eighteenth century.

The Dark Origins of Britain is a landmark series dealing with the greatest unresolved mystery in our history - how the modern nations of England, Wales and Scotland were born out of the chaos of the Dark Ages. In 400 AD, when Roman power collapsed in Britain, we were a province inhabited by Celtic peoples speaking a mixture of early Welsh and Latin. But only two hundred years later, the foundations of a new, Anglo-Saxon, English-speaking nation were being laid.

Conceived as part of the author's wider interest in plant and tree lore and ethnobotanical studies, this fully revised edition of Elsevier's Dictionary of Plant Names and Their Origins contains over 30,000 vernacular and literary English names of plants.

This in-depth exploration of the English language covers every nuance and curiosity of this constantly evolving linguistic pastiche. It is estimated that every year 800 neologisms are added to the English language, and include acronyms (NIMBY, Not In My Backyard), blended words (motel), and those taken from foreign languages (savoir-faire). Laid out in an a-to-z format with detailed cross-references and written to appeal equally to students, etymologists, and nonnative speakers, this historical guide is an invaluable resource for this truly global lingua franca.

Peter L. Bernstein "Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street"