Charles Barber (4) (1915–2000)

An exemplary introduction to the history of the English language. It's concise, it ticks off all the important points, and it's written by an authority on the subject.

My main point of critique is that too many pages are devoted to sound laws while too few pages deal with culture and mentality. Some more illustrations and tables wouldn't have hurt, either. That is offset, though, by the general professionalism throughout, as well as some excellent chapters on Proto-Indo-European and Germanic. Those chapters in particular were a refreshing read, because they managed to convey something of the complexity of the issues without dumbing them down or oversimplifying; they deal very lucidly with obscure-ish matters in ways that feel eye-opening rather than a received summary of long-established scholarship.

There probably exist dozens, if not hundreds of books like this (I myself own several). If your main interest is linguistic, and if you're particularly drawn to the older stages of the language (especially pre-Old English) -- then this book has chapters on offer that outclass its competitors. If not -- this one will do as well as any other, and probably a bit better than most.… (mehr)

The "pitch" of this book doesn't interest me enough to plough through all the way. But the warm up—the chapters on linguistics, on Indo-European languages, on the Germanic languages and on the earliest history of the English language are exceptional. I've read a lot of short introductions to Indo-European linguistics, but few that were finer. It posed and answered a number of questions I'd never before encountered. Here, as with the best non-fiction, one gets the sense the author could write an excellent book on any of the topics he touched on, rather than being a narrow specialist ill at ease outside his specialty.… (mehr)