The Lexicographer's Dilemma
The Evolution of 'Proper' English, from Shakespeare to South Park
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The Lexicographer's Dilemma
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Narrado por:
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Anthony Gettig
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De:
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Jack Lynch
Acerca de esta escucha
In its long history, the English language has had many lawmakers - those who have tried to regulate or otherwise organize the way we speak. The Lexicographer's Dilemma poses a pair of questions: What does proper English mean? And who gets to say what's right? Our ideas of correct or proper English have a history, and today's debates over the state of the language - whether about Ebonics in schools, the unique use of language in a South Park episode, or split infinitives in the Times - make sense only in historical context. As historian Jack Lynch has discovered, every rule has a human history, and the characters who populate his narrative are as interesting for their obsessions as for their erudition. Charting the evolution of English with wit and intelligence, he provides a rich historical perspective that makes us appreciate a new the hard-won standards we now enjoy.
©2009 Jack Lynch (P)2013 Audible, Inc.Los oyentes también disfrutaron...
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General4 out of 5 stars 59
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Narración:4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Historia4 out of 5 stars 40
Early in the history of English, glamour and grammar were the same word, linked to enchantment and magical spells. Now grammar brings to mind language bullies and bored-out-of-their-skulls students. Roy Peter Clark, one of America’s most influential writing teachers, wants to change that by putting the glamour back into grammar.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Wasteful
- De ABID en 12-05-13
De: Roy Peter Clark
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Cultural Amnesia
- Notes in the Margin of My Time
- De: Clive James
- Narrado por: Clive James
- Duración: 6 h y 16 m
- Versión resumida
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General4 out of 5 stars 149
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Narración:4.5 out of 5 stars 104
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Historia4.5 out of 5 stars 103
From Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig, via Charles de Gaulle, Hitler, Thomas Mann and Charlie Chaplin, this varied and unfailingly absorbing book is both story and history, both public memoir and personal record - and provides an essential field-guide to the vast movements of taste, intellect, politics and delusion that helped to prepare the times we live in now.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Very enjoyable and well narrated
- De Larbi en 05-18-08
De: Clive James
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Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue
- The Untold History of English
- De: John McWhorter
- Narrado por: John McWhorter
- Duración: 5 h y 22 m
- Versión completa
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General4 out of 5 stars 4,028
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Narración:4.5 out of 5 stars 3,404
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Historia4 out of 5 stars 3,380
A survey of the quirks and quandaries of the English language, focusing on our strange and wonderful grammar. Why do we say "I am reading a catalog" instead of "I read a catalog"? Why do we say "do" at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue distills hundreds of years of fascinating lore into one lively history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great for casual linguists
- De Bertie en 01-11-10
De: John McWhorter
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The Story of English in 100 Words
- De: David Crystal
- Narrado por: David Crystal
- Duración: 7 h y 56 m
- Versión completa
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General4.5 out of 5 stars 273
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Narración:4.5 out of 5 stars 234
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Historia4.5 out of 5 stars 234
In this unique new history of the world's most ubiquitous language, linguistics expert David Crystal draws on words that best illustrate the huge variety of sources, influences, and events that have helped to shape our vernacular since the first definitively English word was written down in the fifth century ("roe", in case you are wondering). Featuring Latinate and Celtic words, weasel words and nonce-words, ancient words ("loaf") to cutting edge ("twittersphere") and spanning the indispensable words that shape our tongue ("and", "what") to the more fanciful ("fopdoodle"), Crystal takes us along the winding byways of language.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Random but entertaining
- De Sean en 04-01-13
De: David Crystal
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Making History
- The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past
- De: Richard Cohen
- Narrado por: Richard Cohen
- Duración: 26 h y 8 m
- Versión completa
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General4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Narración:4 out of 5 stars 37
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Historia4.5 out of 5 stars 35
There are many stories we can spin about previous ages, but which accounts get told? And by whom? Is there even such a thing as “objective” history? In this “witty, wise, and elegant” (The Spectator), book, Richard Cohen reveals how professional historians and other equally significant witnesses, such as the writers of the Bible, novelists, and political propagandists, influence what becomes the accepted record. Cohen argues, for example, that some historians are practitioners of “Bad History” and twist reality to glorify themselves or their country.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Missing 20 pages from book
- De Rick, Austin en 04-23-22
De: Richard Cohen
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The Pun Also Rises
- How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics
- De: John Pollack
- Narrado por: Pete Larkin
- Duración: 4 h y 57 m
- Versión completa
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General4 out of 5 stars 61
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Narración:4 out of 5 stars 56
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Historia4 out of 5 stars 54
The Pun Also Rises is an authoritative yet playful exploration of a practice that is common, in one form or another, to virtually every language on earth. At once entertaining and educational, this engaging book answers fundamental questions: Just what is a pun, and why do people make them? How did punning impact the development of human language, and how did that drive creativity and progress? And why, after centuries of decline, does the pun still matter?
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3 out of 5 stars
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Punderful Little Book
- De B. Lane en 01-10-13
De: John Pollack
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Notes on a Century
- Reflections of a Middle East Historian
- De: Bernard Lewis, Buntzie Ellis Churchill
- Narrado por: Ralph Lister
- Duración: 12 h y 59 m
- Versión completa
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General4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Narración:4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Historia4.5 out of 5 stars 41
Few historians end up as historical actors in their own right, but Bernard Lewis has both witnessed and participated in some of the key events of the last century. When we think of the Middle East, we see it in terms that he defined and articulated.In this exceptional memoir he shares stories of his wartime service in London and Cairo, decrypting intercepts for MI6, with sometimes unexpected consequences. After the war, he was the first Western scholar ever invited into the Ottoman archives in Istanbul.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Can't Get Enough of the Book
- De Sanford H. en 12-11-13
De: Bernard Lewis, y otros
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The Riddle of the Labyrinth
- The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code
- De: Margalit Fox
- Narrado por: Pam Ward
- Duración: 7 h y 44 m
- Versión completa
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General4 out of 5 stars 148
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Narración:4.5 out of 5 stars 134
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Historia4 out of 5 stars 133
In the tradition of Simon Winchester and Dava Sobel, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code tells one of the most intriguing stories in the history of language, masterfully blending history, linguistics, and cryptology with an elegantly wrought narrative. When famed archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed the ruins of a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greece's Classical Age, he discovered a cache of ancient tablets, Europe's earliest written records.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Discovery and Translation of Linear B Script
- De Sires en 01-11-14
De: Margalit Fox
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How to Speak and Write Correctly
- De: Joseph Devlin
- Narrado por: Shawn Grisden
- Duración: 4 h y 27 m
- Versión completa
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General4 out of 5 stars 43
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Narración:4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Historia4.5 out of 5 stars 35
This book has no pretension about it whatever -- it is neither a Manual of Rhetoric, expatiating on the dogmas of style, nor a Grammar full of arbitrary rules and exceptions. It is merely an effort to help ordinary, everyday people to express themselves in ordinary, everyday language, in a proper manner.
De: Joseph Devlin
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Hitler Homer Bible Christ
- The Historical Papers of Richard Carrier 1995-2013
- De: Richard Carrier
- Narrado por: Richard Carrier
- Duración: 14 h y 2 m
- Versión completa
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General4.5 out of 5 stars 145
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Narración:4.5 out of 5 stars 133
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Historia4.5 out of 5 stars 133
Richard Carrier, Ph.D., philosopher, historian, blogger, has published a number of papers in the field of ancient history and biblical studies. He has also written several books and chapters on diverse subjects, and has been blogging and speaking since 2006. He is known the world over for all the above. But here, together for the first time, are all of Dr. Carrier's peer reviewed academic journal articles in history through the year 2013, collected with his best magazine articles, research papers, and blog posts on the same subjects.
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3 out of 5 stars
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"Call Me Underwhelmed"
- De Ray M en 09-12-16
De: Richard Carrier
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How to Write Short
- Word Craft for Fast Times
- De: Roy Peter Clark
- Narrado por: Roy Peter Clark
- Duración: 5 h y 20 m
- Versión completa
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General4.5 out of 5 stars 82
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Narración:4.5 out of 5 stars 74
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Historia4 out of 5 stars 73
In How to Write Short , Roy Peter Clark turns his attention to the art of painting a thousand pictures with just a few words. Short forms of writing have always existed - from ship logs and telegrams to prayers and haikus. But in this ever-changing Internet age, short-form writing has become an essential skill. Clark covers how to write effective and powerful titles, headlines, essays, sales pitches, Tweets, letters, and even self-descriptions for online dating services.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Ironically long
- De Amazon Customer en 03-14-16
De: Roy Peter Clark
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The Road to Monticello
- The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson
- De: Kevin J. Hayes
- Narrado por: David Baker
- Duración: 25 h y 59 m
- Versión completa
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General4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Narración:5 out of 5 stars 34
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Historia4.5 out of 5 stars 34
Thomas Jefferson was an avid book-collector, a voracious reader, and a gifted writer - a man who prided himself on his knowledge of classical and modern languages and whose marginal annotations include quotations from Euripides, Herodotus, and Milton. And yet there has never been a literary life of our most literary president.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Very Boring Book
- De Greg en 05-13-14
De: Kevin J. Hayes
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Semicolon
- The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark
- De: Cecelia Watson
- Narrado por: Pam Ward
- Duración: 3 h y 47 m
- Versión completa
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General4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Narración:4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Historia4.5 out of 5 stars 56
A pause-resisting, existential romp through the life and times of the world’s most polarizing punctuation mark. Through her rollicking biography of the semicolon, Watson writes a guide to grammar that explains why we don’t need guides at all and refocuses our attention on the deepest, most primary value of language: true communication.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Silly me; I thought it was about semicolons
- De Jeffrey D en 08-15-19
De: Cecelia Watson
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The Art of Nonfiction
- De: Ayn Rand
- Narrado por: Marguerite Gavin
- Duración: 6 h y 52 m
- Versión completa
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General4 out of 5 stars 148
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Narración:4.5 out of 5 stars 90
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Historia4 out of 5 stars 87
Rand takes listeners step by step through the writing process, providing insightful observations and invaluable techniques along the way. She discusses the psychological aspects of writing and the roles played by the conscious and subconscious mind. She talks about articles and books, explaining how to select a subject and theme, how to identify your audience, and how to write the first draft.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great Content, but the narrator is annoying
- De Ms en 01-26-09
De: Ayn Rand
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The Infidel and the Professor
- David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought
- De: Dennis C. Rasmussen
- Narrado por: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Duración: 10 h y 7 m
- Versión completa
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General4.5 out of 5 stars 192
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Narración:4.5 out of 5 stars 155
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Historia4.5 out of 5 stars 156
Vividly written, The Infidel and the Professor is a compelling account of a great friendship of two towering Enlightenment thinkers that had great consequences for modern thought. David Hume is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, but during his lifetime, he was attacked as "the Great Infidel" for his skeptical religious views and deemed unfit to teach the young. In contrast, Adam Smith was a revered professor of moral philosophy and is now often hailed as the founding father of capitalism.
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5 out of 5 stars
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a thoroughly enjoyable account of friendship
- De henryj en 02-21-20
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To Show and to Tell
- The Craft of Literary Nonfiction
- De: Phillip Lopate
- Narrado por: Arthur Morey
- Duración: 7 h y 9 m
- Versión completa
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General4 out of 5 stars 76
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Narración:4.5 out of 5 stars 62
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Historia4 out of 5 stars 62
Distinguished author Phillip Lopate, editor of the celebrated anthology The Art of the Personal Essay, is universally acclaimed as “one of our best personal essayists” ( Dallas Morning News). Here, combining more than 40 years of lessons from his storied career as a writer and professor, he brings us this highly anticipated nuts-and-bolts guide to writing literary nonfiction. A phenomenal master class shaped by Lopate’s informative, accessible tone, and immense gift for storytelling.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not a guide on writing personal essays
- De A. Yoshida en 08-07-13
De: Phillip Lopate
Lo que los oyentes dicen sobre The Lexicographer's Dilemma
Calificaciones medias de los clientesReseñas - Selecciona las pestañas a continuación para cambiar el origen de las reseñas.
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Total5 out of 5 stars
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Ejecución5 out of 5 stars
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Historia5 out of 5 stars
- uvejota
- 09-15-17
Interesting, entertaining and enlightening
If you could sum up The Lexicographer's Dilemma in three words, what would they be?
An interesting, enlightening and certainly entertaining walk through evolution of English language and the multiples dilemmas it has faced. This book explanains how English has been working and developing through years.
Complete review on Medium. https://medium.com/@uvejota/the-lexicographers-dilemma-the-evolution-of-proper-english-from-shakespeare-to-south-park-a6e6fa02a797
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