Sumer Is Icumen In Our Ever-Changing Language

by Crown

Traces the evolution of the English language over the centuries, discussing the influence of other languages upon it, euphemisms, and slang.

67 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 1978

Reviews

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I ended up with a copy of this, courtesy of a nearby library weeding its collection. Sumer Is Icumen In is a simple, yet interesting surface-level look at linguistics, and how the English language has evolved over time. And, given that it was published nearly 50 years ago, there's the further perspective of just how much our verbiage has changed in just that span of time. So, in spite of the fact that it's outdated, there's still something here of value. A quick, and fun, read if you have an interest in etymology; just don't expect anything too deep.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a treatment of the evolution of the English language for laymen. I saw this sitting on the free books cart at the library and it interested the language geek in me. I love the living nature of language, and how it changes over time. This book is older--published in 1978--which to me added to, rather than detracted from, the topic because it's a testament to its subject. When discussing how we need to create terms to describe advances in technology, it was talking about someone who fell asleep in the 1930s waking up in the 1970s and not being able to recognize new terms used around music (stereo, solid state, reel-to-reel tape, LP, lick) and as I read it occurred to me that someone born in the 90s wouldn't generally recognize those terms either because they've gone out of use due to other changes in technology. On the other hand, when the author was discussing slang, he used a variety of phrases and said they'd all "most probably" be no longer in use in a few years, but they are all still slang phrases that we use to this day. The most interesting part to me was the discussion of how linguists have narrowed down the region of origin for the Indo-European family of languages, but the evolution of the language on the British island was also fascinating. I really enjoyed this book and it was also a quick read, took me less than an hour. Glad I picked it up. Well worth the price I paid.

[Merry Packard Gravett]

What a fun little English linguistics book! I think that this is very interesting, and appropriate for the target age group. However, there are lots of other areas in language change that they could have addressed. Instead, it's mostly just lexicon that they talk about.

[Morgen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although listed as "juvenile-scholarship", this is a great, fast read for anyone who has ever been minorly interested in language.