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)

As Entertaining As Possible

Exceptionally well done, they really did make it as interesting as I think is humanly possible. The reader deserves full marks for his efforts, and as for the book itself, again, top marks. I did find a few mistakes (for example, attributing things of Canadian origin to America) and I also thought that it was a little misleading to talk of more modern influences when the words borrowed often also have more ancient roots, but those are small grievances at best.

I will say that I wouldn't recommend the book to a casual passer by, it was largely the fact that I had paid for it that forced me on in the beginning (it did, as I say, become interesting eventually). But for someone with a definite interest, this is a title worth a definite purchase.

good but not great

The book began with great promise...very thoroughly researched, etc. but then some of the author's religiosity seeped in...maybe it is a pet peeve, but he is rarely a bit preachy and I object to the occasional "I this " and "I that". Some of encyclopedic lists are tiresome when narrated but may be better when you can skim while reading. The section on Shakespeare and medieval English is very good, as are some of the sections on various world dialects of English, although I was, for selfish reasons, a bit disappointed when aspects like the Southern accent in America was not discussed. Towards the end, it gets very tiresome, with the author seemingly trying to impress the reader with a laundry list of new slang terms. Narration was pretty good.

OUTSTANDING

This journey with English was fascinating. The author brings the language to life . The research and his analysis was extensive. The vivid history of English in various settings made the book fun.

Excellent Book!

This is a fantastic book! It takes you a tour of how our language has evolved over time, truely fasinating!!! ..and like others have said, the narrator is a very gifted speaker.

A lot of fun

I loved it. The author moves the story along at a fairly quick pace, with lots of entertaining details along the way. Pretty fascinating, I thought. The narrator is A+

A little silly

This book has some interesting information, but it is buried deep inside flights of fancy and purple prose. Bragg is very serious in calling this a "biography": English is treated as a living, breathing thing with wills and desires. The bulk of the book is taken up with speculations about how English might have felt about this, or what she might have been thinking when deciding to do that. I don't mind a little flowery prose now and then, but it got pretty tiresome. Chop that out, and the book would have only been an hour or so long.

The reader was entertaining, though. I have no idea how good his pronunciation of Old English or Church Latin actually is, but is certainly sounded credible.

Great Read for English Nerds

I don't read much non-fiction, but this book held my attention. I'm not sure I learned much new, but it was entertaining and interesting.

Best appreciated with audio and text together

Inspired by my students' research papers, I took a detour into the world of non-fiction and indulged a fascination of mine: English. Like many readers, writers, and teachers, I have a love for the written word and have always enjoyed etymology. Bragg's research tells stories covering centuries of growth in my native tongue. I came to this book via audio and truly was impressed in the reader's ability to capture accent and dialect from English worldwide. There were times, however, that I felt I was missing out on some of the comparisons between the original word and its permutations since I could not see the spelling. Ideally, I think listening simultaneously with reading would truly bring out the full mastery of this work.

The first half of this program is a real gem. I was charmed to listen to Old English and amazed to realize that I could still understand large portions across the ages even to my modern ear. There was a real connection to history through the power of language. Another powerful moment was when I realized the unique "twinning" of language where French words came alongside Anglo-Saxon words, not to replace them as was so often done with other languages, but to give us synonyms and connotations with subtlety. What a gift!

To those of us who recognize the historicity of the Bible and the Tower of Babel, we can see the common roots of language and see the evidence throughout history. This book gave me much to think about in this regard. Also, hearing the earliest English Bible so carefully preserved over the ages was meaningful to me.

With all this praise, you may be wondering, why not five stars? Well, the book started to lose my interest as I got confused by some of the slang in modern times. Perhaps reading the text would have helped. Also, some of the stories behind some of the terms... well, I could have done without. Even so, I do feel like I've gained something and that the time was well spent.

Difficult to follow.

I was really looking forward to this book, however it gets bogged down in all kinds trivial facts.

Also, the author spends quite a bit of time on annunciation's, , It’s hard to describe , but he really doesn’t easily show
how English language came to ‘be’. Just too much frivolous facts and info.

One of the best produced audiobooks in my library

From the writer's clear love of the subject to the reader's mastery of dialects this is an audiobook tour de force.