ENGLISH in AMERICA: A LINGUISTIC HISTORY (audiobook) by Natalie Schilling

 


Published in 2016 by The Great Courses.
Read by Natalie Schilling.
Duration: 5 hours, 55 minutes.
Unabridged.

If you are not aware of The Great Courses, they are basically college-level lectures (undergrad) on a topic. Most of them clock in at around 20 hours in length, but this one came in at just under 6 hours. 

When I saw that the subtitle of English in America was "A Linguistic History", I thought the audiobook would be a more formal history. Rather than present it in a typical history format, the book was presented in a scattergun type style. Everything she covered was perfectly fine to put in her presentations and sounded perfectly good to me - I've listened to and read a few books on this topic (not enough to make me any sort of an expert).

She discusses such topics as how English may have sounded when the first English colonies were established, how American English developed new words, influences on American English from immigrants groups, African American dialects, regional dialects and more.

But, the scattered presentation style made for repeated presentation of facts and prevented a smooth flow. 

There is nothing wrong with this presentation, but I think it should have gone deeper and been gone from topic to topic in a more cohesive manner.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ENGLISH in AMERICA:  A LINGUISTIC HISTORY (audiobook) by Natalie Schilling.

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