The Adventure of English

The Biography of a Language

By: Melvyn Bragg

Narrated by: Robert Powell

Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

This is the remarkable story of the English language; from its beginnings as a minor guttural Germanic dialect to its position today as a truly established global language.

The Adventure of English is not only an enthralling story of power, religion, and trade, but also the story of people, and how their lives continue to change the extraordinary language that is English.

©2003 Melvyn Bragg (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Both entertaining and informative." (Booklist)
"This 'biography' succeeds in its broad, sweeping narrative." (Publishers Weekly)

A Worthwhie Adventure

I very much enjoyed this lecture, it was more than I'd expected. Adventure is the correct word for this as we travel through time learning about about the perils English has and does face. I was especially fascinated by the later chapters covering some current languages that are derivatives of English. Suddenly Ebonics as a language made sense to me.

Perfect for Audio

This is a great book to listen to. It's good to be able to listen to how the words actually sound, rather than trying to imagine what they would sound like when read off a page.

Enjoyed the book tremendously and highly recommend it.

Interesting read

I enjoyed this book. It is sometime quite complex with all examples and names, forcing you to rewind many times in order to be able to follow it and not lose track completely. It creates a good balance between the scholarly and the popular.

Superlative

Wonderful, fascinating, enlightening. Brilliantly read. A few boring parts (to my mind) that required wading through, but this is in my personal audible download hall of fame.

One I must buy in hardback

There is so much valuable information here that I'm going to buy the book for easier reference. If you love or just curious about the English language in the context of history, you will love this book. Excellent research, excellent story-telling, excellent narration.

Unoriginal but well read

In some ways I found this an unnecessary book - it doesn't do anything that wasn't already done in Robert McCrum's "The Story of English" or Bill Bryson's "Mother Tongue". Having read those books, I didn't feel that I learned anything new. However, it was a pleasure to experience a book on this subject in audio format - Robert Powell is a brilliant narrator and does a superb job of reading Old English and the numerous accents required of him (only Uncle Remus seems to defeat him - the result is very awkward). If you've never read a book on this subject, this will be a fascinating experience. Even if you have, it might be worthwhile for Powell's narration.

Powerful and energetic

Listening to this audiobook is like going to a gym for language - the author not only tells a fascinating story of language development but also sets a model of writing that is both muscular and refined - English at its best!

You Definitely Get Your Words' Worth

Working from his own script, British TV personality and scholar Melvyn Bragg sets himself an ambitious goal: to trace the history of the English language and how it came to rule the world. That he calls his history a biography is interesting, because he treats the language anthropomorphically, as if it is a warrior intent on self-preservation and world domination.

What works well here is putting the development of the language in historical context -- how history affected the evolution of English and how English affected the course of history (the former more of a factor in the early stages, the latter in more recent times).

What left me wanting is the ultimate reason for how and why English proved so flexible that it was able to grow so vastly. Part of my problem is that I have read other books in which this is explained -- it has more to do with grammar than words (Bragg is almost totally consumed with vocabulary, spending little time on how those words are put together syntactically).

This becomes a major issue in dealing with the Vikings -- relatively few words survive from Old Norse, but its grammar (according to another book) simplified English, opening it up to outside influence, and hence the influx of large swaths of vocabulary from other languages, particularly French and Latin.

So I must deduct one star from my Story rating because Bragg seemingly missed a major part of the story, focusing on a different part of the story. Also, the vocabulary, that's a no-brainer -- English incorporated so many words from other languages because history exposed English speakers to those languages. Somewhat of a tautology there.

On the other hand, there is something here I learned for the first time -- the influence of West African language structures on English via the slaves brought to the New World. It was not any sort of difficulty in learning a new language that caused these variations -- they can be traced directly back to African linguistics. It helps immensely that in this case Bragg relies less on words than on grammar, in contrast to much of the rest of the book.

While the narration is superb, there is an additional problem caused by the emphasis on words -- there are often long lists of words (sometimes with their counterparts from other languages), and that gets tedious (in print one would presumably skim over them, in audio you have to listen to every word). But overall, if you like the idea of spending 12 hours steeping yourself in the history of your language, this is an excellent listen.

surprisingly engaging

I am no linguist, just a person with a curious interest in history and odd facts. This book satiates my appetite for both. It personifies "English" into a sortof person, striving to survive the ages, despite a wild attack on it from all sides at every turn. I love the way the author has created suspense throughout, as though we don't know whether it will survive in the end or not! And what a great review of history, putting it all in perspective with how English fared at each time period.

I enjoy the reader's voice, and his pronunciations are quite amazing and necessarily good for the understanding of the book. I don't think I would have nearly as much understanding were it not for this, so I am glad to have the audiobook instead of the printed version.

While not being a murder mystery or suspense thriller, this book is surprisingly engaging. Enjoy!

Highly recommend

This amazing book is full of information ranging from the origins of English to Shakespeare and the Bible to pidgins and slang. Bragg talks about English as it's spoken by people from all over the world. I love that, instead of disparaging any of the many dialects, he celebrates their variety and energy, dismissing the idea that there is - or should be - a standard English. I'm not happy with Bragg's suggestion that English is inherently more suited to becoming an international language than other languages. I am sure other readers will believe, as I do, that this is a result of history, politics and culture rather than of any special feature of English itself.

Being able to hear Powell pronounce all of the words in the book (word lists, etymology, accents, etc.) was so useful. I don't think I would have enjoyed this book half as much if I had read a physical copy. My only complaint is that I wish they had chosen additional narrators to read some of the poems, songs and stories described in the book. Powell did a great job when reading excerpts of British literature and even Old English, but the attempts at a Southern folk story and then a Jamaican poem were cringe-worthy.

Overall, a great audiobook. Any listener will pick up a lot of fun facts to share with their friends. More importantly, listeners will be better able to appreciate English and its rich history, be it their first language or their second (or third or eigth).