Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare Review

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Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare ReviewAs a scientist, and as a long-term Brit living in the States, I feel doubly qualified to comment on this volume about English by a British expert in the field.
There's been some press coverage recently about how the book lists the clichés people hate most, such as "at the end of the day", "it's not rocket science", "24/7" etc. The book looks in some depth at usages people dislike, and some historical reasons for this antipathy. But it also covers much, much more than that: primarily, exactly how and why English continually evolves, and why that is neither good nor bad: it just happens.
To be honest, while I often use dictionaries, I'd never really thought about how they are created - though, of course, "The Professor and the Madman" had touched a chord in my imagination, as it did for so many other people. Having read Damp Squid, I understand that analysing language nowadays is scientific in a way it wasn't for the OED. Rather than laying down the law about how people SHOULD use language, dictionary writers analyse how people really ARE using language, based on huge amounts of data. This book explains exactly how they do this - thanks to the Web.
While it goes into some quite technical and fascinating detail, it does so with a lightness of touch which made me want to read on. It's an appealing mixture of scholarship and wit and I assume that's why it got the glowing endorsement from Alexander McCall Smith: "This book will be fascinating to those who would really like to find out how the English language is behaving." It will make a good stocking-filler since it's an ideal Holiday season read - both browsable and satisfying. Until I read it, I had no idea that "damp squid" was what it calls an "eggcorn" - an imaginative mistake. Copies will be under the tree for some of my American friends as well as the Brits.Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare OverviewWhen James Murray compiled the OED in the 19th century, he used a small army of volunteers--and thousands upon thousands of paper slips--to track down the English language. Today, linguists use massive computer power--including the world's largest language databank, the Oxford Corpus, which contains more than two billion words--to determine for the first time definitively how the English language is used. From evidence contained in the gargantuan Oxford Corpus, Jeremy Butterfield here uncovers a wealth of fascinating facts about the English language. Where does our vocabulary come from? How do word meanings change? How is our language really being used? This entertaining book has the up-to-date and authoritative answers to all the key questions about our language. Butterfield takes a thorough look at the English language and exposes its peculiarities and penchants, its development and difficulties, revealing exactly how it operates. We learn, for instance, that we use language in chunks of words--as one linguist put it, "we know words by the company that they keep." For instance, the word quintessentially is joined half the time with a nationality--something is "quintessentially American" or "quintessentially British." Likewise, in comparing eccentric with quirky, the Corpus reveals that eccentric almost always appears in reference to people, as an "eccentric uncle," while quirky usually refers to the actions of people, as in "quirky behavior."Using such observations, Butterfield explains how dictionary makers decide which words to include, how they find definitions, and how the Corpus influences the process. Covering all areas of English, from spelling and idioms to the future of English, and with entertaining examples and useful charts throughout, this compelling and lively book will delight word lovers everywhere.

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