Best etymology books according to redditors
We found 112 Reddit comments discussing the best etymology books. We ranked the 57 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 112 Reddit comments discussing the best etymology books. We ranked the 57 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
![The Etymologicon [Hardcover]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51eMqb+isWL.jpg)
I think I found it and thought it would be useful here... wow this was a tough one. But the PDF (20mb) is in a less (apologies) "child-friendly" format but has the same content.
http://www.koto8.net/nihongo_learn.pdf
Img1: S-01; to suck; pdf page 52
Img2: K-01; to curve; pdf page 83
Img3: N-03; gluey; pdf page 10
Img4: T-05; to adhere; pdf page 75
It is from this book Learn Japanese From Etymology: Approach From Sound Symbolism by Watanabe Masamichi
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Learn-Japanese-Etymology-Approach-Symbolism-ebook/dp/B00WWYP1VA
This book is a compilation of Japanese-specific vocabulary. This book focuses only on pure Japanese vocabulary excluding Chinese vocabulary which is shown by the kanji. This book covers approximately 1,800 Japanese words in total, which 860 of them are explained with illustrations. It covers almost all Japanese words. The Book is classifying Japanese in the unique method. The consistent idea throughout the book is “there is a relationship between vocal sounds and meanings in the Japanese language”. The principle of Japanese word generation is shown. The former linguistic theory of origin was a hypothesis. At this book, vocabulary is classified on the basis of Japanese origin theory. It is useful actually, so the value of this theory will be demonstrated.
Kuckst du hier
Don't make me give you a lesson on time zones. You might want to check this out.
I've heard this before that there are no accrediting bodies for online TEFL certificates. I began one through ITTT and was disappointed by my experience, but I had a lot more knowledge going into it and ultimately went for a master's degree, so I wouldn't count my experience as typical. However, your abilities aren't going to improve from just doing a TEFL certificate. You gotta get into a classroom and pay your dues like all teachers. The things that become instinctual do so over time. There's no shortcut for it, but you can supplement your training with the wealth of materials out there for teachers. Two pretty decent texts on how people learn language (theory) and how you can apply that theory (instruction) are Theories on Second Language Acquisition and Communicative Language Teaching in Action. VanPatten also came out with an updated book called While We're on the Topic. I would also suggest the Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English. If you read through all these, you'll be more prepared for instructing in a classroom than any TEFL certificate will prepare you for. Indeed, you'll also figure out that a lot of certification content excludes relevant research from the field.
I read a great book called Words on the Move that explains this and many other things, and it's made it a lot easier for me to chill out about the way other people use language.
I'm assigning you some required reading.
The Blue Book of Grammar
The Only Grammar Book You'll Ever Need
The Elements of Style
Thank me later.
It was the first word spoken on the Moon.
e: I'd like to also recommend the book OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word.
Here is the book I read that finally made me resign myself to the evolution of 'literally': Words on the Move: Why English Won't - and Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally)
Edited to add: And a related article I was trying to find the link to!
Or this...
This was addressed in a recent book, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English by John McWhorter
I'm assuming you're being tongue-in-cheek, but this is a world that interests me deeply so I thought I'd offer a proper response.
There are four points to your argument: 1) OK is an initialism, 2) initialisms aren't allowed, and 3) the proper spelling of OK is all capitalized, and 4) capitalized words shouldn't be allowed. I'll address each one in turn.
Language is neither cut-and-dry, nor is it stagnant. The spelling, denotation, connotation, and pronunciation of words are never fixed and are always subject to any one person's understanding and interpretation.
You might find this book interesting:
http://www.amazon.com/OK-Improbable-Story-Americas-Greatest/dp/0199892539
Edit: Removed affiliate code. Not intended as spam; my bad.
To Construct a Language: http://www.lulu.com/shop/dan-gaynes/to-construct-a-language/paperback/product-23167868.html
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Language-Invention-Horse-Lords-World-Building/dp/0143126466
https://www.amazon.com/Language-Construction-Kit-Mark-Rosenfelder/dp/098447000X
https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Language-Construction-Mark-Rosenfelder-ebook/dp/B008XTOV8C
https://www.amazon.com/Conlangers-Lexipedia-Mark-Rosenfelder/dp/1493733001
There are also lots of conlang books at Lulu: https://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=conlang&type=
Longform is pretentious buzzfeed
It's from his book, Words on the Move
I have been using this book with a friend and it's really good, kind of pricey but it has great examples and exercises.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0131849379/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
>I've tended to see Middle English as more of an Old English/Norman French Creole.
Yes, I think that's definitely the case. John McWhorter makes a couple of really interesting points in his book Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue (good read btw, and link to bonus /r/linguistics discussion of the book), namely that the influence of Norman French probably began well before the Norman Conquest of 1066, because the Brits and the Normans were probably trading and visiting and whatnot for centuries anyway. (He also has a really interesting theory that Norse/Viking invaders contributed to the simplification of Old English's incredibly complex grammar structure, but that's somewhat unrelated!) But the point is that yes, Middle English is less the "next phase" of English, and more a combination of Norman French and Old English.
>Considering how standardized spelling went out the window in the Middle English period
Just a small point, here - there was no standardized spelling until about
the 1800s, when we started printing dictionaries1755, with Samuel Johnson's very popular "A Dictionary of the English Language". Up until then, it was sort of a free-for-all (Shakespeare himself was pretty liberal with the spelling of his own name!). But yes, there was definitely an overhaul of government when the Normans arrived, so we do see a lot of leftover Norman vocabulary and phrases ("law and order" and other "x and y" phrases come from that period of Norman rule). We're left with a lot of divisive vocabulary from that time as well, like "pork" and "pig" - the former refers to the food, the final product, and is from French, because the ruling Normans would've seen that final product, but the latter is from Old English, because the lower class would've been the ones in charge of the animals and the cooking.I read a book written my an etymologist that mentioned that the "bon fire" with the french origin was folk etymology, and that it was from bone fire, like the OP's link. The book was "Everything You Know About English Is Wrong", and was really interesting. I recall the author being pretty good about explaining his research and sources, but I read it a while ago, so I don't remember the details.
If you don't mind forking over a few dollars, The Conlanger's Lexipedia is a pretty great book.
Gonna repost my reply to a similar question in last weeks SQ thread:
If you have some cash to spare, I hightly recommend getting the Conlanger's Lexipedia, which goes into all sorts of details about creating vocabulary.
Other than that, there is a lot of creativity that goes into it. Thinking about the etymological histories of your words can help create more real vocab. As a cheap example from my own language, the words for "tea" "to boil" and "culinary/medicinal pine needles" are all related. Derivations are another useful strategy. Rather than just making a new root for a word you come across, ask yourself if you can derive it from a root you already have. Maybe "puppy" is just the diminutive of "dog", "table" might be derived from the word for "to eat".
And that's another thing to think about, the semantic space. In English, desk and table are separate words, but maybe in your language they're the same. Think about your people and what's important to them. A seafaring people living on a chain of tropical islands may have many different roots for types of marine life and nautical terminology. But a desert people may only have one term for "fish" that covers all marine life - "turtle", "Crab", "shark" "Whale" "trout" etc could all be the same word, possibly only distinguished by some adjective or other adverbial. The conlanger's thesaurus is a good resource to check out to get some ideas about dividing up your semantic space.
From a technical point of view, modern English language was created in the process of many peoples with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds learning the language and morphing it into what it is now. I recommend reading http://www.amazon.com/Our-Magnificent-Bastard-Tongue-English/dp/1592403956 . In addition to explaining why modern English is so different from Old English, it plausibly explained a few constructs in Russian that do not exist in Belarusian (an icing on the cake :). There were a few boring chapters in the book, but I see now that the author tried to explain and rationalize many things that seem irrelevant now.
If you're serious about learning the subject, begin with Word Origins... And How We Know Them: Etymology for Everyone, The Oxford Guide to Etymology, and The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English.
If you're looking for a more accessible introduction, however, try Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue: The Story of the English Language.
> With all of this being said, I'm very traditional in my grammar when writing academically, to the point of writing subject pronouns after "to be" verbs and the use of "be" in the present subjunctive rather than an indicative present conjugation.
Could you please provide us with a simple pair of contrasting examples that would show what you mean by 'the use of "be" in the present subjunctive rather than an indicative present conjugation'?
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> While "them" as a singular object pronoun is often used conversationally, it isn't specified as a singular pronoun in books like The Blue Book of Grammar. Colleges and college professors often refer to books of grammar like these.
Is "The Blue Book of Grammar" the same book as the one by Jane Straus, The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation?
As someone who also recently got into Linguistics at the university level, I can sympathize. Since my degree isn't Linguistics I didn't need to take a language for two years, but I would (personally) go for either Sanskrit or Greek.
General Advice: As someone else said, definitely work on IPA and sentence diagraming/sentence trees. Both are (in my opinion) extremely fun and interesting. I give this link to anyone asking for help with IPA. A TA of mine sent it to me, and it has been invaluable. Sentence diagramming can be tricky to pick up. One of the textbooks I used was the Longman Student Grammar and it is packed with information on various parts of English syntax. For 30 bucks on Amazon, it's definitely worth it (unless one of your classes uses a similar text, in which case, I would suggest waiting because textbooks are way too expensive).
Other than that, my only other suggestion is to get to know your Linguistics professors. Applied Linguistics is such a huge field (I assume most of your professors will belong to it), and each one of them I guarantee has a different specialty. Two of my professors specialize in speech pathology, one specializes in corpus research, another in syntax, and there are more that I won't list. Figure out what you really enjoy doing since it's so broad, and try to focus in on that (while obviously getting a broad knowledge of the other fields). Best of luck!
edit: I also meant to say, try to get involved in an internship with the department at some point in your college career. Much of linguistics is research, and having a research assistant internship on a future resume would stand out.
It's a good book. Christine Kenneally's The First Word is also good, and a bit more up-to-date.
You call it French, I call it a bastardized, stripped down regional Latin as spoken by semi-civilized Vikings.
And, while linguists aren't entirely in agreement on it, there's a great deal of evidence that a number of things having to do with word order and "meaningless do" in the present progressive are directly borrowed from English's Celtic neighbors. Personally, I am convinced. It's basically the old guard linguists who are still sticking to the narrative that has Britain's Celtic languages simply disappearing --with the obvious exceptions of Welsh and Cornish-- into a vacuum. "Our Magnificent Bastard Toungue" by John McWhorter is a pretty good recent book on the subject.
sogar die Flüsse sind übersetzt. Grüße aus Hügelburg am Strom
BTW: ist das ein Scan dieser Karte?
https://www.amazon.de/Atlas-Wahren-Namen-Sprachraum-Etymologische/dp/3981030168
This is total bullshit by the way. OK was coined in 1839 but a newspaper editor.
This book goes into more details.
I just bought this for under $10 its small and convient to take with me anywhere.
https://www.amazon.com/Only-Grammar-Book-Youll-Ever/dp/1580628559/ref=pd_ybh_a_5?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=XY524A04HA51XJYWP62S
It's a line from The IT Crowd based on a common misinterpretation of the phrase. Apparently it's a book title too!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Damp-Squid-English-Language-Laid/dp/019957409X
This is the most accurate etymology I've heard. There was recently a book written about it.
Sounds like you're looking for curriculum. So google grade level, common core ELA and see what you get. I usually use the California framework to skill build for my boarding kids. Definitely gunge your student's ability level and decide if there skills are at grade level. I've had kids like the one your describing come in a few grade levels below where they needed to be. One good tip is to do an essay and make a list of things to work on with your student so you can show them improvement over time. That way you can manage expectations. Anyhow, here's a list of resources I use:
Use this one to build topical lessons: https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Academic-English-Third-Longman/dp/0201340542/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=oshima+writing+academic+english+3rd&qid=1562233499&s=gateway&sr=8-1
​
And this one to load up punctuation: https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Book-Grammar-Punctuation-Easy/dp/1118785568/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=blue+book+of+american+english+and+grammar&qid=1562233598&s=gateway&sr=8-2
​
This series is also awesome for building lessons: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=elements+of+literature&crid=3EMT7657D9UI&sprefix=elements+of+liter%2Caps%2C451&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
https://www.amazon.co.jp/Learn-Japanese-Etymology-Approach-Symbolism-ebook/dp/B00WWYP1VA
Not specifically about song writing, but I listened to Mark Forsyth's The Elements of Eloquence on audio book over the weekend and had my mind blown. It's a short listen, but leaves you incredibly awed at the skill of the author and inspired to employ the techniques.
I think The Only Grammar Book You'll Ever Need would be perfect for the basics. That's a good one. Truby's The Anatomy of Story is a great source as well.
http://www.amazon.com/Only-Grammar-Book-Youll-Ever/dp/1580628559
nut sure what do you mean by complete but The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation is pretty comorehensive in my opinion:
The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation: An Easy-to-Use Guide with Clear Rules, Real-World Examples, and Reproducible Quizzes https://www.amazon.de/dp/1118785568/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_-qISCbRT379VQ
Nazi was a short name for the name Ignatius, which was commonly used to mean a "dumb farmer from Bavaria", much like a hick is in the USA (which is short for Richard).
Hitler's opponents realized they could fittingly shorten the party's name Nationalsozialistiche Deutsche Arbeiterpartei to Nazi and insult Hitler. So the Nazis wouldn't actually call themselves "Nazi" and would have thought of it as an insult!
Got my info from this book I'm reading, "The Etymologicon".
The example the book gives is if some right-winger created a party in the USA called "Red States for the Next America".
I read this book a few years ago and remember reading about phonesthemes. I don't have it anymore so I can't point you to a specific chapter, but it might be a start for you.
Liberman, Anatoly. 2005. Word Origins… and how we know them: etymology for Everyone. Oxford University Press.
Go and buy these three books: The Language Construction Kit, Advanced Language Construction (don't worry, it's not that advanced), and The Conlanger's Lexipedia. And if your conlangs are designed for made-up worlds, then get [The Planet Construction Kit] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Planet-Construction-Kit-Mark-Rosenfelder/dp/0984470034/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=W79ND56BKPK8EKXT2VQZ) too. If you want to make cultures that are not European then I'd also suggest The China Construction Kit!
Of all of these I'd suggest that you definitely buy The Language Construction Kit and see how you get on. I'd also suggest buying some grammar books of languages you're interested in, and even go so far as to learn a second language if you don't speak one. Having knowledge of at least one other language will help you a great deal.
There is actually an entire book written about the word OK. (I always use OK, for whatever reason.)
Here are two interesting articles about the book.
[Learn Spanish via Etymologies ](Learn Spanish via Etymologies: The Addictive Way To Learn Spanish Quickly https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BQVTYG9/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_9rTXBb7ZF74F1) — strongly recommended and based on SpanishEtymology
Looking for two books in pdf format.
Book 1
Book 2
This language and grammar are subjects which I find endlessly fascinating. As a child, I was endlessly pestered by my pedantic relatives. As an adult, I discovered that English, and all other languages, evolve naturally over time. Attempting to stamp one particular version of English as standard and hold it static for eternity, is folly (look at French, Italian, or German). That's not to say that there aren't places where standardization and precision in language are not important (law, science, etc.), but for day to day communication, relax; live a little!
There's a great BBC documentary available on youtube about the history of the English language. It is as entertaining as it is fascinating (if you're into such things).
Also, there's a fun little book by Jeremy Butterfield, titled Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare, which looks at the history of the language, and issues such as standardization.
I guess if you're a Grammar Nazi, that makes me a member of the Grammar Résistance (I'll have to run out for a béret and a baguette).
Need PDF of book $5
A Writer's Reference, ISBN 9781319057442 1319057446, Ninth edition
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1319057446/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_01-JBb83P1CSY
I'm reading a grammar book right now (The Only Grammar Book You'll Ever Need) and it claims that using an apostrophe the way you mentioned is correct:
> There are a few rare instances when you use apostrophes to form plurals. The first is when you're writing abbreviations that have more than one period.
> M.D. = M.D.'s
We're just used to omitting the periods when using internet acronyms.
The First Word puts it pretty nicely. We are monkeys juggling symbols in our heads, not computers.
I recommend The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation: An Easy-to-Use Guide with Clear Rules, Real-World Examples, and Reproducible Quizzes: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118785568/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_8k..BbTMSGQQY.
The instruction is straightforward, and the practice sets are very helpful.
Might be worth making the investment
Sure chimp, everyone is Ph.D on an anonymous web forum. Yeah, you've got nothing of value or intelligence to offer. But I would suggest purchasing this, assuming you can afford it:
http://www.amazon.com/Basic-English-Grammar-Student-Answer/dp/0131849379/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1425236508&sr=8-2&keywords=basic+english+grammar
Buy this
The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation: An Easy-to-Use Guide with Clear Rules, Real-World Examples, and Reproducible Quizzes https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118785568/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_UP25BbNZXDEMR