English Language History

China today is one of the world's most powerful nations, yet just a century ago it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, left behind in the wake of Western technology. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu shows that China's most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: to make the formidable Chinese language - a 2,200-year-old writing system that was daunting to natives and foreigners alike - accessible to a globalised digital world.

To untangle the knot of interlocking meanings of these painted words, logophile and mythologist Phil Cousineau begins each fascinating word entry with his own brief definition. He then fills it in with a tint of etymology and a smattering of quotes that show how the word is used, ending with a list of companion words.

Successful word coinage—those that stay in currency for a good long time—tend to conceal their beginnings. We take them at face value and rarely when and where they were first minted. Engaging, illuminating, and authoritative, Ralph Keyes' The Hidden History of Coined Words explores the etymological underworld of terms and expressions and uncovers plenty of hidden gems.

The book, "Understanding AI: Machine Learning, NLP, and GPT, From Origins to Industry Disruption", takes readers on a comprehensive journey through the history, development, and applications of conversational artificial intelligence (AI). The book begins by discussing the early pioneers of AI, including Alan Turing and John von Neumann, and their contributions to the field. The first few chapters provide a detailed overview of the key AI techniques and architectures, including expert systems, natural language processing, and neural networks, that paved the way for developing Chatbots like ...

In 1976, the Northwest Minnesota Regional History Center, a part of the Minnesota Historical Society, conducted a bi-centennial project to record the voices of first and second generation Scandinavian Immigrants in the Upper Midwest, especially in the Red River Valley of Minnesota and North Dakota. The author traveled to their homes and interviewed more than a hundred immigrants or their children to gather information on the immigrant experience. Among the issues explored with these people were conditions in the home country, reasons for emigration, the route of the emigrations and the ...

Linguist and writer Lorna Gibb will explore the history of these languages, the cultures they belong to, the tales they tell, while offering a glimpse into what we can learn from each of them. From Australia to Finland, from India to the Canary Islands, from Namibia to the United States, from Scotland to Paraguay, the book will guide the reader through contrasting stories of languages under threat and languages in resurgence.

Claire Wilcox has been a curator of fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum for most of her working life. In Patch Work, she steps into the archive of memory, deftly stitching together her dedicated study of fashion with the story of her own life lived in and through clothes. From her mother's black wedding suit to the swirling patterns of her own silk kimono, her memoir unfolds in spare, luminous prose the spellbinding power of the things we wear.

Many consider "The Canterville Ghost" the most famous ghost story of all time. It is a parody featuring a dramatic spirit named Sir Simon and an American ambassador named Mr. Hiram B. Otis. Mr. Otis travels to England with his family and moves into a haunted castle. Lord Canterville, the previous owner of the castle, warns Mr. Otis that the ghost of Sir Simon de Canterville has haunted the castle ever since he killed his wife, Eleonore, centuries ago.

Under the Skin investigates the role of cross-cultural body modification in seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century North America, revealing that the practices of tattooing and scalping were crucial to interactions between Natives and newcomers. These permanent and painful marks could act as signs of alliance or signs of conflict, producing a complex bodily archive of cross-cultural entanglement. Indigenous body modification practices were adopted and transformed by colonial powers, making tattooing and scalping key forms of cultural and political contestation in early America.

ANYA ACHTENBERG is an award-winning author of the novel Blue Earth, and novella, The Stories of Devil-Girl (both with Modern History Press); and poetry books, The Stone of Language (West End Press); and I Know What the Small Girl Knew (Holy Cow! Press). Her fiction has received awards from Coppola’s Zoetrope: All-Story, New Letters, the Asheville Fiction Workshop, the Raymond Carver Story Contest, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and more; and poetry awards include first prizes from Southern Poetry Review and Another Chicago Magazine. Individual works of fiction and poetry have also been ...

This compact Cayman Islands Trivia helps you to discover the Cayman Islands' history, places of interest and fun-facts from as early as 1503. The questions in this book make information about the Cayman Islands both easy and fun. They are asked in a variety of ways: true/false, fill in the blanks, sentence completion, and the answers, all of which are supported by references, and are thoroughly researched. The questions are simply put, but deep-rooted. It is entertaining and educational. Quiz yourself on how much you know. You will be surprised. Sometimes, all you need is a reminder of the ...

You should have experienced situations when people do not understand you when you are in a foreign country. Especially when you are ordering food, you probably want to go to the kitchen and instruct on how to cook or even cook for yourself. This happens even more when you are asking for direction. People give you a random answer and try to get over it.

In Don't Believe a Word trained linguist David Shariatmadari takes us on a mind-boggling journey through the science of language, urging us to abandon our dearly held beliefs in a bid to uncover the (far more interesting) truth about what we do with words. Exploding nine widely held myths about language while introducing us to some of the fundamental insights of modern linguistics, with David Shariatmadari as our energetic guide we can marvel at the beauty and quirkiness of humanity's greatest achievement.

Language of War is about what happens when your world changes overnight. When you wake up to the sound of helicopters and the smell of gunpowder. When your home is hit by shells or broken into by gunmen, and you spend another night in a basement-turned-bomb shelter. When, even though you’ve never held a weapon before, you realise the only choice is to fight back. It is about things one can never forget, or forgive.

Get the Ultimate Guide to Winning Wars! Sun Tzu's Art of War For centuries, Sun Tzu's Art of War has been the ultimate guide for military strategists, diplomats, and leaders seeking to gain a competitive edge. This comprehensive compendium brings together two of the most respected English translations of this ancient Chinese masterpiece, along with the original text in Chinese annotated with pinyin. Two Classic Translations, One Unparalleled Resource This unique collection features the translations of: Arthur Calthrop, a British officer and scholar who first introduced the Art of War to ...

In Stop Being Reasonable, philosopher and journalist Eleanor Gordon-Smith tells six lucid, gripping stories that show the limits of human reason. From the woman who realised her husband harboured a terrible secret, to the man who left the cult he had been raised in since birth, and the British reality TV contestant who, having impersonated someone else for a month, discovered he could no longer return to his former identity, all of the people interviewed radically altered their beliefs about the things that matter most.

Would you receive a ‘char and a wad’ with a grateful smile? If asked to take a ‘dekko’, would you be offended? And if spotted reading the ‘yellow press’, would you be embarrassed?The meaning of these and many other intriguing phrases are defined, and their loss lamented, in this wonderfully nostalgic look at how language has changed over the past few decades.

When it comes to mastering a foreign language, learning around your interests makes all the difference. But finding books designed for language learners can be hard! This book fixes that. For the first time, you’ll learn to improve your Spanish while learning about the history and theory of rock’n’roll.

High on a cliff in Hawaii in 1807, an irrepressibly curious native boy dives into the sea and swims to an American merchant ship anchored offshore, embarking on an extraordinary adventure that will change history.

Words to Eat By explores the remarkable stories behind five of our most basic food words, words which reveal fascinating aspects of the evolution of the English language and our powerful associations with certain foods. Using sources that vary from Roman histories and early translations of the Bible to Julia Child's recipes and Frank Bruni's restaurant reviews, Ina Lipkowitz shows how saturated with French and Italian names the English culinary vocabulary is, "from a la carte to zabaglione."