DWD's Reviews

  Published in 2019 by HighBridge. Read by the author, John McWhorter. Duration: 4 hours, 19 minutes. Unabridged. John McWhorter is, perhaps, the best known linguist in America (after Noam Chomsky). He has written about general rules of how languages over long periods of time, the evolution of English, the history behind English's biggest and baddest curse words, and more. Although he speaks in a formal tone, he has a knack for explaining fairly complicated things with everyday English and with lots of easy to follow examples. The author and reader, John McWhorter In this book, the topic is what is commonly known as Black English.  Many people think of Black English as simply "bad" or "slang" English - English with less verb conjugations, double negatives and the endings left off of lots of words. McWhorter demonstrates that Black English isn't just random mispronunciations and made up words. Instead, it is a coherent system that has its own distinct grammar...

Originally Published by The Great Courses in 2012. This version published by The Great Courses in 2013. Read by the author, John McWhorter. Unabridged. Linguist John McWhorter takes a look at the history of the English language in this 24 lecture presentation. He includes the origins of some of our more unique features and also the origins of some of our "rules" that aren't really rules at all. The author, John McWhorter McWhorter takes a long view, going all of the way back to English's roots in proto-Indo-European. Proto-Indo-European language from the Caucus mountains region that spread all over the place and eventually became lots and lots of modern languages, including English. For me, the most interesting theory was based on English's relative lack of verb endings. If you have ever studied Spanish, like me, than you remember the endless verb charts and verb endings. The same goes with French and German. Why doesn't English have all of those endings? We u...

  Published in May of 2021 by Penguin Audio. Read by the author, John McWhorter. Duration: 6 hours, 52 minutes. Unabridged. John McWhorter is a linguist who teaches at Columbia University. He does the nitty gritty linguistic work that professional linguists love to read about, but he also is pretty good at explaining linguistics to the non-professionals as well. The author, John McWhorter In Nine Nasty Words , McWhorter explores the origins of nine taboo words in English. Naturally, this brings to mind the familiar cast of "four letter words", but he also looks into other words that are similarly potent, such as the infamous "n word". I found the book to be entertaining and an accessible look at how language changes over time - and sometimes it changes very quickly. McWhorter cites written sources, music, plays, musicals, TV shows and movies as artifacts to show when the words were used, how they were used and if there was a change in their use. For example, the wor...

  Published in 2004 by The Great Courses. Lectures delivered by the author, John McWhorter. Duration: 18 hours, 15 minutes. Unabridged.   The idea behind The Great Courses is a simple one - take a college lecture course given by an expert that knows how to give an interesting lecture and package it up as an audiobook that anyone can listen to. John McWhorter is probably the most famous linguist in America after Noam Chomsky. He takes the listeners on a very thorough introduction to the topic of human language. We learn about proto-languages, language families, tonal languages, sounds that are likely to disappear over time, and how English became the interesting mess that it is and why it's actually easier to learn than most English speakers think. I come at this being sort of a language nerd - I teach Spanish. McWhorter's lectures were usually informative and entertaining. But, editing out or consolidating 5 or 6 lectures out of this 35+ lecture series would have improved it....