Arika Okrent Books

Here is the captivating story of humankind’s enduring quest to build a better language—and overcome the curse of Babel. Just about everyone has heard of Esperanto, which was nothing less than one man’s attempt to bring about world peace by means of linguistic solidarity. And every Star Trek fan knows about Klingon. But few people have heard of Babm, Blissymbolics, Loglan (not to be confused with Lojban), and the nearly nine hundred other invented languages that represent the hard work, high hopes, and full-blown delusions of so many misguided souls over the centuries. With intelligence and humor, Arika Okrent has written a truly original and enlightening book for all word freaks, grammar geeks, and plain old language lovers.

Highly Irregular is an illustrated history of English as told through all the things that are weird about it. Why are there so many silent letters? Why do we have irregular verbs? What is the deal with the word 'colonel'? The weirdness of English can be blamed on specific influences that shaped it, and in this book Arika Okrent investigates the many puzzles of our language to show how English came to be the way it is today.