Mouthful of Air: Languages, Languages...Especially EnglishThe author of more than 50 books--including the classic A Clockwork Orange--presents a fascinating survey of language: how it reached its present situation; how it operates now; and how it will develop in the future. Anthony Burgess covers everything from Shakespeare's pronunciation, to the politics of speech, to the place of English in the world, and more. |
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A MOUTHFUL OF AIR: Language, Languages...Especially English
User Review - Jane Doe - KirkusBurgess has demonstrated his passion for language in his fiction, his essays and reviews, and his multivolumed autobiography (You've Had Your Time, 1991, etc.)—but now, at age 76, he explains it ... Read full review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - jtho - LibraryThingI originally bought this book for a Linguistics class at university - but it was optional, and I didn't read a page of it. Years later, I picked it back up and I loved it. It doesn't read like a ... Read full review
Contents
Signals in the Dark | 19 |
The Science of Language | 37 |
Language in Action | 48 |
Copyright | |
30 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
A Mouthful of Air: Language and Languages, Especially English Anthony Burgess No preview available - 1993 |
Common terms and phrases
adjective allophone alphabet American American English Anglo-Saxon anglophone Arabic Arabic alphabet back vowel Beowulf Bible British British English called Celts Chinese Cockney come consonant dialect dictionary diphthong Doctor Zhivago England English language Esperanto film Finnegans Wake foreign French fricative front vowel Geneva Bible George Bernard Shaw German Germanic language glish grammar Greek Greek alphabet Grimm's law guage H. L. Mencken hard palate hear Hebrew homophones Howth Castle i-mutation I. A. Richards ideograms Indo-European Indo-European language Ingvaeones International Phonetic Alphabet Istvaeones Italian kind Krio Laadan Lancashire language lateral consonant Latin Latin languages linguistic lip-rounding lips literary literature loanwords Malay Mazateco meaning mensae merely Middle English modern morphemes mouth MOUTHFUL OF AIR nasal nasal consonants Nineteen Eighty-Four Norman Conquest Northumbria noun Old English Oxford English Dictionary palate phatic phonemes phrase pictograms pidgin plosive plural Portuguese pronounced pronunciation rather Received Pronunciation rendering rhotic rhyme Roman Roman alphabet Romance languages Russian Samuel Johnson Sanskrit Sassenachs schwa Scots Scottish English Scouse seems Semitic languages semivowel sentence Shakespeare slang soft mutation soft palate solecism sound Spanish speak speakers speech spelling Suzette Haden Elgin symbol T. S. Eliot term though tion tongue translation unvoiced velar verb vocabulary vocal vocal cords voiced voiced bilabial fricative vowel vowel length Vowel Shift Vulgate W. H. Auden Welsh words writing Yiddish yogh
Bibliographic information
| Title | Mouthful of Air: Languages, Languages...Especially English |
| Author | Anthony Burgess |
| Publisher | Quill, 1994 |
| Original from | Pennsylvania State University |
| Digitized | Jun 4, 2009 |
| ISBN | 068813789X, 9780688137892 |
| Length | 416 pages |
| Subjects | › › Language Arts & Disciplines / General Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / General Reference / Word Lists |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |