Books of Late

{ Books & Learning }

June 27, 2007

I’m still aiming for 50 books read this year (I have a friend who is trying for a hundred, which I can only shake my head in awe at). I just finished Do You Speak American?, a pop linguistics book about the controversy over the evolution of spoken English in America. I didn’t like it that much.

To quote my LibraryThing review:

An easy read, but not a particularly enlightening one. I’ve taken just enough linguistics (in college) and read just enough pop linguistics that this book didn’t have much new to say to me. Yeah, there are prescriptivists and descriptivists. Yeah, people in Brooklyn sound different than people in California.

There were a few moments of interest, but nothing striking enough that I remember even a stray particular fact. When the authors delve into modern discussion of slang (especially teenage), they manage to sound like hopeless squares, despite their gormless, eager efforts to sound liberal-minded and in the know.

To see all of my LibraryThing reviews, go here.

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