Prodigal Tongue

‘The first and perhaps only book on the relative merits of American and British English that is dominated by facts and analysis rather than nationalistic prejudice. For all its scholarship, this is also a funny and rollicking read.’The Economist, Books of the Year Only an American would call autumn fall or refer to a perfectly good pavement as a sidewalk… Not so, says Lynne Murphy. The English invented sidewalk in the seventeenth century and in 1693 John Dryden wrote the line, ‘Or how last fall he raised the weekly bills.’Perhaps we don’t know our own language quite as well as we thought.Murphy, an American linguist in Britain, dissects the myths surrounding British and American English in a laugh-out-loud exploration of how language works and where it's going.

‘The first and perhaps only book on the relative merits of American and British English that is dominated by facts and analysis rather than nationalistic prejudice. For all its scholarship, this is also a funny and rollicking read.’, ‘[Murphy’s] delivery is sparkling, her approach mischievous, her material brightened by the unexpected…a potpourri of enchanting, counterintuitive surprises…The Prodigal Tongue is playful, funny, smart and often humbling…Murphy’s prose is beguiling, and sprinkled with sprightly quotations...before the apocalypse, you could do worse than read Lynne Murphy’s delightful book.’, ‘Witty and erudite...what lifts The Prodigal Tongue is Murphy’s deep learning, lightly worn, in linguistics and linguistic history...fascinating.’, ‘A fun, practical and intelligent book which reminds us it’s OK to say tomato both ways.’, ‘Murphy ranges far and wide, with much wonderful detail and colour. She is particularly good on sport, manners, class and death, and her observations on food are fascinating.’

Lynne Murphy is a professor in linguistics at the University of Sussex. She blogs at separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com and tweets @lynneguist. A dual British/American citizen, she lives in Brighton.