To my surprise, this was a relatively dense work of scholarship, and not the popular history I'd expected, given its publisher (Holt, a fine press, but not the kind of university or academic press that normally publishes this sort of book), and the general appearance of the book, blurbs and all. In fact, I couldn't help but wonder, especially given the author's clear reliance on the Oxford English Dictionary, if this wasn't more the province of the Oxford University Press.

In any case, Henry Hitchings offers his prospective reader a kind of travelers' history of the accretion of the English language. War, revolution, peace, trade, exploration--all of these are points of contact for English speakers with the rest of the world, and it is these contacts that have shaped and will, as Mr. Hitchings notes in his conclusion, continue to shape the English language. Mr. Hitchings, in my estimation, is a competent scholar and an elegant stylist. Both of his attributes, therefore, make for a dense but generous and readable book.

I took a month to read Hitchings's book, I admit. I had a hard time going through the historical beginning. I put it aside for a week or so and read some other books. And then I returned to it at a point where we/he had reached 19th century, and it was a breeze after that. I just get a bit turned around with all the invasions and imperial aggressions in the earlier history, but this may not be an issue for many.

Hitchings is a good writer with a knack for words on his own right. The book certainly has a narrative; it concerns how English became the way it is today through its borrowings and due to the invasions it experienced. I found some chapters fascinating, like the Voodoo chapter, probably because there was a concentration of words and intersections of cultures I was especially interested in. For example, the borrowings from Wolof (juke or joog, later become juke-house, later leads the way to jukebox), the good old story of bikini (one that I knew, but I like to be reminded of), and the origins of OK and jazz, not to mention hipster (a must-know if you live in Brooklyn!) His discussion in the same chapter of Gullah as the precursor for African English and in later chapters of how popular music and hip hop are the most successful mutators and creators of modern language is fascinating as well.

In the end, I learned a lot. Some of the most memorable etymologies: Magazine, bugger (perfect, if you have Bulgarian friends!), jazz (especially the journey of the word), sideburn (General Burnside, anyone?), doodle, usted (formal second-person pronoun in Spanish, comes from another language!), tulip, coffee, aloof, and nitwit.

The book has a nice index at the end that takes you to the word of interest, where you will find the world tangled up in history, invasion, violence, war, hatred, love, and absurdity. And that's the whole point. ( )

Factually fascinating, but lacking the wit and sparkle that makes some works (even academic,footnoted ones) irresistible. Still, this is one book I won't be giving away, and I know I will fondly pick it up often.The best example of a sparkling academic-ish book is "The Canon: The Beautiful basics of Science" by Natalie Angier. ( )

This is not a page-turner, but nor was it intended to be. I still found myself (slowly) getting through the book to the end. This is a fabulous source for quiz-night questions - part-history and all etymology. Hitchings wows with his breadth of knowledge of words generally and especially of borrowings from other languages. Great index of the words used as examples in the text - making it easy to dive back in and check half-remembered facts. (Like - the extinct language of Haiti gave us canoe, papaya, maize and cassava; honcho (as in head honcho) is Japanese and not Spanish/Latino as everyone in my very small straw poll thought.) Read October 2010. ( )

An enjoyable relaxed stroll through history and the evolution of our language. Amongst all the fascinating details three things stood out for me in particular.
Firstly we have the choice of several words to convey similar ideas, the root source will reflect the character and the way the word is used. Anglo Saxon origin words will have a rough and ready, robust meaning, French origin words will have a more sophisticated connotation and Latin derived will have a formal legalise usage.
Secondly the paucity of words to describe objects and concepts available to our early speakers. As the influx of words into English is traced through the centuries you get this incredible impression of the horizons and range in interest opening up with words coming in to name and describe these new experiences.
Like the landscape we live our language is steeped in the history of our people. All those modern current words and phrases we use and live with so often are centuries old and record some long forgotten events back in the mists of time. Though our language is always evolving and moving forward it envelops our past even if we fail to realise it. What way to discover our history by understanding the origins of our language.
Surrender to the book and enjoy the revelling in us as a people. ( )