Reference Books > Languages > English Language (& New Zealand and other Englishes)

How's your ebb tide? Do you sign on the dotted lion? Is your tea nature Orpheus Rocker? Who is Charlie Charm Puck in 'Waltzing Matilda'? Here, collected in one volume, are Afferbeck Lauder's groundbreaking studies of Australian speech, Let Stalk Strine and Nose Tone Unturned. Also included are Fraffly Well Spoken and Fraffly Suite, Lauder's guide to the strangled dialect of the English upper class. Reproduced with Al Terego's original illustrations, these classic books are full of mare chick momence. They are essential reading for ... read more

If you've ever wondered why your girlfriend's a 'Sheila' even though her name is Kate, or why your friend in the outer suburbs of Sydney is said to live 'beyond the black stump', then this is the book for you! Throwing light on all the quirky, intriguing and downright bizarre words and phrases that make up 'Australian English', this entertaining dictionary of slang belongs on everyone's bookshelf. If you're an Australian, you'll be fascinated to find out how some of the sayings came to be; and if you're a visitor you'll find it an ... read more

"Me and Dad flew home from Australia on Ear New Zealand and there was nothing we wanted more than fush'n'chups with youse guys". Is New Zealand English going to hell in a handcart, or is it simply evolving into an increasingly distinctive Kiwi form? Should we be seeking to hold on the old and claw back what we have 'lost', or should we learn to accept change and rejoice in something that is uniquely our own? Sociolinguist Elizabeth Gordon has been commenting on this and other matters of linguistic debate in a weekly column in the C... read more

Elizabeth Gordon discusses the devlopment and evolution of the New Zealand accent from the earliest days when children of the early settlers spoke with the dialects of their parents, through the remarkably short period of time to when people began to accuse children and others of speaking with an odious 'colonial twang'. Various English dialects and Maori also contributed to the mix to produce a unique New Zealand voice. First published 2008.

Do you speak Nu Zild?
Over 150 years we have developed our own unique take on the English language. And it's not just about fush and chups. Rather it's about the often hilarious and sometime downright baffling New Zealandisms we use in all sorts of situations, and for all types of pastimes and passions. In Kiwi Speak, the top-selling author of Cricket Speak and Rugby Speak eavesdrops at the dinner table, the school yard, the farm and the sports club to bring us an entertaining dictionary of phrases and expressions. Dra... read more

Though our 'information age' is drowning us in words - most notably through the rapid rise in popularity of the blog - our collective vocabulary seems to be growing ever more impoverished. So here is a collection of rare and neglected words that, if reintroduced, will help breathe much-needed life, savour and vitality back into the English language and will delight anyone keen to enrich their verbal repertoire. Each of these 100 hand-picked words comes with a precise definition, a quotation from literature, a personal note from the... read more

A miscellany about life, loss and the human condition.They go. They vanish. People. Civilizations. Languages. Philosophies. Works of art disappear, species are extinguished, books are lost. Dunwich is drowned, Pompeii buried, Athena's statue gone from the Parthenon, Suetonius's Lives of the Great Whores gone the way of the Roman Empire. Whole libraries of knowledge, galleries of secrets. Gone. Little things, too. Train compartments. Snuff, galoshes, smog. Your mother's perfume. Our culture, our knowledge and all our lives are shado... read more

A witty, entertaining, impassioned guide to perfect punctuation, for everyone who cares about precise writing. Not a primer but a Zero Tolerance manual for direct action.When social histories come to be written of the first decade of the 21st century, people will note a turning point in 2003 when declining standards of punctuation were reversed. Linguists will record Lynne Truss as the saviour of the semi-colon and the avenging angel of the apostrophe.A panda walked into a cafe. He ordered a sandwich, ate it, then pulled out a gun ... read more

'It is a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word'

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Born as a Germanic tongue with the arrival in Britain of the Anglo-Saxons in the early medieval period, heavily influenced by Norman French from the 11th century, and finally emerging as modern English from the late Middle Ages, the English language has grown to become the linguistic equivalent of a superpower, and is now sometimes described as the world's lingua franca. Worldwide some 380 million people speak English as a first language and some 600 million as a second language. A staggering one billion people are believed to be l... read more

When the Sex Pistols swore live on tea-time telly in 1976, there was outrage across Britain. Headlines screamed. Christians marched. TVs were kicked in. Thirty years on, all those words are media-mainstream - bandied about with impunity on TV and in the papers. This is the story of our bad language and its three-decade journey from the fringes of decency to the working centre of a more linguistically liberal nation. Silverton takes a clear, comprehensive and witty look at swearing and the impact of its new acceptability on our lang... read more

A mondegreen is a word or phrase which, when spoken or sung, is misheard as another word or phrase, often resulting in a hilarious outcome. Most people have heard of the famous mondegreen, 'send three-and-fourpence, we're going to a dance', the surprise request of a troop of soldiers who actually said, 'send reinforcements, we're going to advance'. The most common causes of confusion are song lyrics, as puzzled listeners struggle to work out why The Beatles were singing "The girl with colitis goes by" ('The girl with kaleidoscope e... read more

In gloriously corrosive prose, M.J. Harper destroys the cherished national myths of the English, the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish and - to demonstrate his lack of national bias - the French. In doing so he also shows that most of the entries in the Oxford English Dictionary are wrong, the whole of British place-name theory is misconceived, Latin is not what it seems, the Anglo-Saxons played no major part in our history or language, and Middle English is a wholly imaginary language created by well meaning but deluded academics. Icono... read more

Standards of spoken and written English are deteriorating throughout the land and it is not only those from disadvantaged backgrounds such as footballers, disc jockeys and tabloid journalists who are massacring our noble language. Broadsheet journalists, serious broadcasters, novelists, politicians and, most culpably of all, the educators themselves are all too frequently guilty of teeth-grating misuse of words and phrases under the misapprehension that they are speaking or writing 'proper English'. This handy guide is a heroic ... read more

Enraged by jargon? Angered by pseudo-intelligence prose from 20-something wannabe wordsmiths? James Cochrane sympathises... John Humphrys, Britain's best-loved radio journalist, introduces a new edition of this waspish review of the massacre of the Queen's English. This handy guide is a valiant attempt to salvage some pearls of good usage from the linguistic dystopia of English speakers. For the most part, the examples of bad English come from people in the public eye who consider themselves educated and who ought to know bet... read more

A meticulously researched, highly entertaining, idiosyncratic look at the how, why and what of bad language around the world.Have we always sworn like troopers? Has creative cursing developed simply because we can't thump someone when they make us mad? And if verbal aggression is universal, why is it that some languages (Japanese for instance) supposedly have no offensive words?Language once reserved for the footy field - or the labour ward - has broken through the tradesman's entrance, much to the horror of a few refined individua... read more

A meticulously researched, highly entertaining, idiosyncratic look at the how, why and what of bad language around the world. Have we always sworn like troopers? Does creative cursing stem from not being able to thump someone when they make us mad? And if verbal aggression is universal, what about languages like Japanese that supposedly have no offensive words? Language once reserved for the footy field (or the labour ward) has broken through the tradesman's entrance, much to the horror of a few refined individuals, but not ap... read more

At last, the longed-for and much-requested companion volume to DEATH SENTENCE, Don Watson

' ...in public life the language has never been held in less regard. It withers in the dungeons of the technocratic mind. It is butchered by the media. In politics it lacks all qualifications for the main game.' Don Watson Almost sixty years ago, George Orwell described the decay of language and why this threatened democratic society. But compared to what we now endure, the public language of Orwell's day brimmed with life and truth. Today's corporations, government departments, news media, and, perhaps most dangerously, politician... read more