Linguistics

Why do we eat toast for breakfast, and then toast to good health at dinner? What does the turkey we eat on Thanksgiving have to do with the country on the eastern Mediterranean? Find out....

Scots: The Mither Tongue is a classic of contemporary Scottish culture and essential listening for those who care about their country's identity in the 21st century. It is a passionately written history of how the Scots have come to speak the way they do....

This course offers an overview of the English language that is literary, historical, cultural, political, and scientific in its scope....

Daniel Everett, then a Christian missionary, arrived among the Pirahã in 1977 - with his wife and three young children - intending to convert them....

A collection of short stories from such favorites as Wilkie Collins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Rudyard Kipling are joined by others written anonymously in this anthology which will have you scratching your head and listening just a bit longer to discover the key to the mysteries....

This short, opinionated audiobook addresses the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which argues that the language we speak shapes the way we perceive the world....

Phaedrus lures Socrates outside the walls of Athens, where he seldom goes, by promising to share a new work by his friend and mentor, Lysias, a famous writer of speeches....

Like Tom Jones before him, Barry Lyndon is one of the most lively and roguish characters in English literature....

Banter, chit-chat, gossip, natter, tete-a-tete: these are just a few of the terms for the varied ways in which we interact with one another through conversation. David Crystal explores the factors that motivate so many different kinds of talk and reveals the rules we use unconsciously....

The daughter of the rector of Endelstow, a sparse, sea-swept parish in Cornwall, Elfride is caught between two suitors of very different backgrounds....

Published in 1904, The Golden Bowl is the last completed novel of Henry James. In it, the widowed American Adam Verver is in Europe with his daughter Maggie....

In this haunting tale, Gerald Roylake returns home after his father's death. He becomes reacquainted with Christal Toller, the millkeeper's daughter, but is challenged at every turn....

The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists chronicles the tale of Frank Owen, a traveling socialist visionary making his way from town to town in the name of the socialist revolution. When spring arrives, Frank Owen decides to settle in the quiet town of Mugsborough....

Perhaps Dickens' ultimate vision of a dark, macabre London and the corrupting power of money....

This volume celebrates six such languages - Ancient Greek, Latin, Old English, Sanskrit, Old Irish, and Biblical Hebrew - by first introducing listeners to their most distinctive features, then showing how these linguistic traits play out in short excerpts from actual ancient texts....

What do we talk about when we talk about Irish? When we talk about saving or supporting a language do we mean the musical combination of syllables...

First published in 1766 and a perennial favorite since then, The Vicar of Wakefield is built around the naïve but loveable figure of Dr Primrose....

All humans, but no other species, have the capacity to create and understand language. It provides structure to our thoughts, allowing us to plan, communicate, and create new ideas, without limit....

In Framley Parsonage, the author leaves the confines of Barchester and looks to the countryside, where he relates the moral difficulties of Mark Robarts....

Linguists have been studying Black English as a speech variety for years, arguing to the public that it is different from Standard English, not a degradation of it. Yet false assumptions and controversies still swirl around what it means to speak and sound "Black"....