History of English

Acknowledgements Using this book 1 The birth of English: clues in placenames 2 Investigating change in English 3 Marks on the page: letters and punctuation 4 Spellings and speech sounds 5 Borrowing words 6 New words from old 7 Changing meanings 8 Grammar I: nouns and inflections 9 Grammar II: verbs, inflections and word-order 10 Dialects in England 11 Standardisation 12 World Englishes Appendix Index