Language & Literature
David Crystal
Spell it Out and The Story of English in 100 Words
3:00pm | Saturday 15 September 2012Tickets: | Duration: | Venue: |
£N/A | 1 Hour | St Mary Magdalene Church |
Click here for this year's events
Buy The Books event id:404
This was an Oxford Literary Festival 2012 Event.
Click here for this year's Events and Information
One of the leading experts on the English language Prof David Crystal asks how many words it takes to tell the story of a language. He reflects on his personal choices for The Story of English in 100 Words, and, for the first time in a long and illustrious linguistic career, he turns the spotlight onto the evolution of English spelling. This, he says, is a subject he always avoided, because he could not see how to handle the huge range of idiosyncratic spellings that confuse English learners. He will explain why he changed his mind and wrote his latest book, Spell It Out, and why he does not find English spelling so scary after all.
Crystal has written more than 100 books during a long career as a linguist, academic, writer and broadcaster. He is best known for his two encyclopedias, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language and The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. He has worked on several TV series and documentaries including the BBC’s The Routes of Welsh, The Way That We Say It, and The Word on the Street.