"In this book, Melvyn Bragg shows us the remarkable story of the English language, from its modest beginnings aroundA.D. 500 as a minor guttural Germanic dialect to its current position as a truly established global language. Along the way its story takes in a host of characters, locations, and events. Bragg brings the reader from the early Anglo-Saxon tribes and Alfred the Great's stubborn resistance to the Danes, through the impact of the Norman invasion in 1066, and on to the arrival of such early literary masterpieces as Beowulf and Geoffrey Chaucer's bawdy Canterbury Tales. Bragg tells the tales of Henry VIII's battles with the Church over bootleg Bibles, and the influence of the "coarse" playwright William Shakespeare, who alone contributed 2,000 new words to the language! With its spread to North America, English expanded with the songs of the Creole slaves, with the bold language of Davy Crockett, and with Lewis and Clark'sexpedition West, which coined hundreds of new terms as theexplorers discovered hitherto unknown flora and fauna. From street slang and Dr. Johnson's dictionary to the roleof English in India, Bragg leaves no stone unturned in hislinguistic adventure." "Embracing elements of Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, Hindi, and Gullah, this 1,500-year story covers a huge range of countries and peoples. The Adventure of English is a narrative not only of power, religion, and trade but also of people and how they have changed - and continue, day byday, to change, along with the extraordinary language thatis English."--BOOK JACKET.