David Crystal Books

David Crystal provides concise, accessible answers to fifty questions about English language usage. In this compact, user-friendly book, David Crystal draws on his extensive knowledge and experience to answer questions from English language teachers and learners from around the world. The book covers topics ranging from general enquiries about the language as a whole to specific points of grammar, pronunciation, orthography, vocabulary, idiom and style. The author's responses are illustrated by personal anecdotes, placed within historical and literary context and supported by research and corpus data to provide unique, authentic insights.

The classic original edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, first published in 1911 in a beautifully reproduced facsimile edition with a new introductory essay by David Crystal.

Suitable for scholars, students and actors, this book contains glosses and quotes for over 14,000 words that could be misunderstood by modern audience. It features different panels that look at such areas of Shakespeare's language as greetings, swear-words and terms of address. schovat popis

This dictionary is the first comprehensive description of Shakespearean original pronuniciation (OP), enabling practitioners to deal with any queries about the pronunciation of individual words. It includes all the words in the First Folio, transcribed using IPA, and the accompanying website hosts sound files to further aid pronunciation. It also includes the main sources of evidence in the texts, notably all spelling variants (along with a frequency count for each variant) and all rhymes (including those occurring elsewhere in the canon, such as the Sonnets and long poems). An extensive introduction provides a full account of the aims, evidence, history, and current use of OP in relation to Shakespeare productions, as well as indicating the wider use of OP in relation to other Elizabethan and Jacobean writers, composers from the period, the King James Bible, and those involved in reconstructing heritage centers. It will be an invaluable resource for producers, directors, actors, and others wishing to mount a Shakespeare production or present Shakespeare's poetry in original pronunciation, as well as for students and academics in the fields of literary criticism and Shakespeare studies more generally.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language is one of the publishing phenomena of recent times. Rarely has a book so packed with accurate and well researched factual information been so widely read and popularly acclaimed. It has played a key role in the spread of general interest in language matters, generating further publications and broadcasting events for an avid audience. Its First Edition appeared in hardback in 1995 and a revised paperback in 1997. There have been numerous subsequent updated reprintings; but this Second Edition now presents an overhaul of the subject for a new generation of language-lovers and of teachers, students and professional English-users concerned with their own linguistic legacy. The book offers a unique experience of the English language, exploring its past, present and future. David Crystal systematically explains the history, structure, variety and range of uses of English worldwide, employing a rich apparatus of text, pictures, tables, maps and graphics. The length of the Second Edition has increased by 16 pages and there are 44 new illustrations, a new chapter, extensive new material on world English and Internet English, and a complete updating of statistics, further reading suggestions and other references throughout the book.

A second edition, newly revised for the current generation, includes coverage of world English and Internet English as well as updated statistics, further reading suggestions, and additional references lists.

Proverbs are fascinating in what they tell us about a culture's view of everyday life, and proverbial wisdom is a key factor in understanding different peoples and cultures. David Crystal takes us on a global tour of the world's proverbs.

A comprehensive new reference work that offers the widest range of information available in a single volume. Features more than 30,000 main entries with 75,000 cross references, a unique 128-page Ready Reference section, more than 750 line drawings, illustrations and maps. The perfect desk reference for the '90s. Shrinkwrapped.

How did Shakespeare's plays sound when they were originally performed? How can we know, and could the original pronunciation ever be recreated? David Crystal recounts and reflects on Shakespeare's Globe's experiment with original pronunciation.

The endangerment and death of minority languages across the world is a matter of widespread concern. A leading commentator on language issues, David Crystal asks the question, 'why is language death so important?', reviews the reasons for the current crisis, and investigates what is being done to reduce its impact.