he was at a dinner and he was advertising a book. The American humorist Gelett Burgess, back in. "But in the case of blurb, we do, because this is a perfect example, been well recorded. "Nobody exactly knows when a particular word comes into English. And the reason is it had a completely fresh boost of life the following year, when it began to be used as a slogan in the U.S.
O-L-L for 'all,' and K-O-R-R-E-C-T for 'correct.' Now, there were dozens of other abbreviations in the Boston newspaper at the time, and most of them had disappeared. "And OK came, at that point in time, from 'oll korrect,'. Because at the time, there was a vogue for inventing humorous abbreviations using initial letters. There was a great American lexicographer called Allen Walker Read, who many years ago did a huge study and found out that the word 'OK' first appeared in the 1830s. "I think we do now know where OK comes from. "One of the reasons why I love it is because of the point that Roger has made, and that is that it has had so many guesses for its origins. And something like 600 languages have loaned or given words to English over the past 1,000 years." "Every language that English has come into contact with, it's pinched some of the words - thousands and thousands of words in many cases. "English has been this vacuum cleaner of a language, because of its history meeting up with the Romans and then the Danes, the Vikings and then the French and then the Renaissance with all the Latin and Greek and Hebrew in the background. On the English language as a vacuum cleaner Your purchase helps support NPR programming. The whole language falls apart."Ĭrystal discusses the idiosyncrasies of the English language and some of his favorite words that made the list.Ĭlose overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Story of English in 100 Words Author David Crystal
"And this is a great shame, because without them, we have no syntax. they don't get any press at all," Crystal tells NPR's Neal Conan. "Poor little words like 'and,' and 'the,' and 'of'. In his new book, he tells The Story of English in 100 Words, using a collection of words - classic ones like "tea" and new words like "app" - that explain how the the English language has evolved.Ĭrystal thinks every word has a story to tell, even the ones as commonplace as "and." Linguist David Crystal describes English as a "vacuum cleaner of a language." Speakers merrily swipe some words from other languages, adopt others because they're cool or sound classy, and simply make up other terms. This interview was originally broadcast on April 2, 2012. "Tea" (a social word from the 17th century) is one of the words David Crystal examines in his book The Story of English In 100 Words.
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