Language & Linguistics

Bored and ignored wife and mother accidentally tells the truth; with hilarious and surprising results.

Did you know that the word salary comes from the Latin sal for 'salt', since part of the payment to Roman soldiers was in salt? That braces and suspenders used to refer to different items of clothing? Or that trolls have migrated from fairytales to online discussion forums? The E...nglish language is currently going through a period of tremendous ferment, growth and expansion. Old 'rules' are being challenged, or weakened. New ones are emerging. And mistakes and misuses are popping up with all the speed that the internet can provide. For over two decades, linguist Roly Sussex has documented the nature and evolution of the English Language on his popular weekly ABC Radio program 'Word for Today'. For the first time, the best of these reflections on word origins, neologisms and misuses are collected in this witty and insightful book. With Word for Today, you'll always have a word for tomorrow.
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A weird and wonderful word and its meaning for every day of the year.

THE ACCLAIMED NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. Because Internet is for anyone who's ever puzzled over how to punctuate a text message or wondered where memes come from. It's the perfect book for understanding how the internet is changing the English language, why that's a good thing, a...nd what our online interactions reveal about who we are. Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What's more, social media is a vast laboratory of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch language evolve in real time. Even the most absurd-looking slang has genuine patterns behind it. Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores the deep forces that shape human language and influence the way we communicate with one another. She explains how your first social internet experience influences whether you prefer 'LOL' or 'lol', why ~sparkly tildes~ succeeded where centuries of proposals for irony punctuation had failed, what emoji have in common with physical gestures, and how the artfully disarrayed language of animal memes like lolcats and doggo made them more likely to spread. 'McCulloch is such a disarming writer - lucid, friendly, unequivocally excited about her subject - that I began to marvel at the flexibility of the online language she describes, with its numerous shades of subtlety.' New York Times
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Presenting a tour of English from its mongrel origins to its status as the world's most-spoken tongue; its apparent simplicity to its deceptive complexity; its vibrant swearing to its uncertain spelling and pronunciation, this book covers curious eccentricities that make it as ma...ddening to learn and as flexible to use.
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