The Story of English in 100 Words

By: David Crystal

Narrated by: David Crystal

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 via the rude, the obscure, and the downright surprising.

©2011 David Crystal (P)2012 AudioGO

Throughly delightful

Despite a not-so-subtle straw man representation of the political Right in the entry for “PC” (these NPR vets just can’t keep anything neutral), this was an enlightening and playful read. I absolutely loved it!

Very Interesting!

Usually I enjoy listening to a novel, or non-fiction about animals; however, this story about English words was very fascinating. I only knew a few bits and pieces, now I know much more.

I enjoyed David Crystal’s voice and the way he emphasized words and phrases with various inflection and intonation to keep my interest, I imagine he’s a pleasant man to be in conversation with. So hats off!

Random but entertaining

The book is well suited to intermittent listening because each word gets it's own 4-5 minute chapter without any overlap. Conversely, just as each etymology becomes interesting it's time to move on, which gets frustrating.

He uses obscure words as well as current coinage (such as "blogoshpere") to demonstrate all the various ways words enter our language. There is really no grand conclusion about the history of the language so a better title might be "The story of 100 English words."

It's entertaining and light and the performance is very good.

100 Words Covers It

The story of these 100 words can be described, however inadequately, with one: fascinating. The story is fast-paced, even gripping at times, with just enough erudition to be compelling without losing accessibility. Well done. Of course, part of the fun is questioning which words were left out.

Extremely charming...

… in the fascinating and colorful tidbits of information it provides (via 100 easy-to-digest short takes), charming in the author's likably modest, often witty style, and charming, finally, in the author’s narration. It turns out that Crystal possesses the absolutely perfect voice with which to present his own writing. (P.S. It’s a book to dip into and snack on; it’s probably not the sort of book that you’d want to listen to straight through.)