Robert McCrum - Globish - How English Became the World's Languag torrent

Robert McCrum - Globish - How English Became the World's Language

Unabridged; 96 kbps, Read by James Langton

Publishers Weekly
Britannia may not rule, but it still presides over the world's discourse, according to this sketchy, triumphalist chronicle of the English language. McCrum (The Story of English), associate editor of Britain's Observer, surveys the latter-day apotheosis of English as the international language, observing Chinese English-language boot camps, Bangalore call centers, and the takeover of Britain's Man Booker prize by non-British novelists. But most of the book is a historical pageant of the English-speaking peoples as they assimilated, conquered, or enslaved foreigners and expropriated words and dialects under the leadership of statesmen/wordsmiths from King Alfred to Churchill and literary geniuses like Shakespeare and Twain. McCrum makes a pragmatic, happenstance case for the international popularity of English: the British Empire and American hegemony spread it around the planet, making it the obvious choice for a globalizing world's lingua franca. But he also advances a grander and less coherent brief for English as the language of individual freedom, democracy, and capitalism, contrasting its “contagious, adaptable, populist and subversive” spirit with the snobby elitism of French. That's a bit of language chauvinism that no linguistic analysis, especially one as cursory as McCrum's, can sustain

Library Journal
When McCrum contributed to the book and television series Story of English in the 1980s, most scholars felt the language was degenerating into numerous dialects. Why was that view inaccurate? McCrum identifies factors that made the British pen triumphant in a vast linguistic empire—e.g., a multicultural and multilanguage legacy from early invasions, language seeds sown through an eventual empire, being among victors of 20th-century world war, and a heritage of valuing literacy. These values spurred economies and global media such as CNN and the BBC, even before the Internet, all through which English currently offers a unified communications platform. McCrum supports his narrative with quotations and biographical sketches that powerfully connect older English to today, such as biblical language echoed by Barack Obama. VERDICT Readers unfamiliar with British history may find some sections difficult, but the absence of linguistic jargon combines with supporting documentation to create an overall effective work. Distinguished by its historical focus and accessibility to a general audience, this book successfully appeals to language lovers and history buffs alike.

Robert McCrum is the associate editor of The Observer and lives in London with his wife, Sarah Lyall. His books include the bestselling The Story of English, My Year Off, Wodehouse: A Life, and Globish.