In this brilliant transatlantic survival guide, Erin Moore examines the key differences between the British and the Americans through their language. You’ll discover why Americans give – and take – so many bloody compliments and never, ever say ‘shall’ (well hardly ever), as well as what the British really mean when they say ‘proper’, why they believe it is better to be bright than clever and how the word sorry has at least eight different meanings for them.
Are we tired of hearing that fall is a season, sick of being offered fries and told about the latest movie? Yeah. Have we noticed the sly interpolation of Americanisms into our everyday speech? You betcha. And are we outraged? Hell, yes. But do we do anything? Too much hassle. Until now. In That's The Way It Crumbles Matthew Engel presents a call to arms against the linguistic impoverishment that happens when one language dominates another. With dismay and wry amusement, he traces the American invasion of our language from the early days of the New World, via the influence of Edison, the dance hall and the talkies, right up to the Apple and Microsoft-dominated present day, and explores the fate of other languages trying to fend off linguistic takeover bids. It is not the Americans' fault, more the result of their talent for innovation and our own indifference. He explains how America's cultural supremacy affects British gestures, celebrations and way of life, and how every paragraph and conversation includes words the British no longer even think of as Americanisms. Part battle cry, part love song, part elegy, this book celebrates the strange, the banal, the precious and the endangered parts of our uncommon common language.
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Glocal English compares the usage patterns and stylistic conventions of the world’s two dominant native varieties of English (British and American English) with Nigerian English, which ranks as the English world’s fastest-growing non-native variety courtesy of the unrelenting ubiquity of the Nigerian (English-language) movie industry in Africa and the Black Atlantic Diaspora. Using contemporary examples from the mass media and the author’s rich experiential data, the book isolates the peculiar structural, grammatical, and stylistic characteristics of Nigerian English and shows its similarities as well as its often humorous differences with British and American English. Although Nigerian English forms the backdrop of the book, it will benefit teachers of English as a second or foreign language across the world. Similarly, because it presents complex grammatical concepts in a lucid, personal narrative style, it is useful both to a general and a specialist audience, including people who study anthropology and globalization. The true-life experiential encounters that the book uses to instantiate the differences and similarities between Nigerian English and native varieties of English will make it valuable as an empirical data mine for disciplines that investigate the movement and diffusion of linguistic codes across the bounds of nations and states in the age of globalization.
A struggling actor gets caught up in a mob family’s last hit in this comic crime thriller by the beloved actor from TV’s NCIS. Crime pays. And pays well. Sal, Max, and Enzo Bruschetti have proved this over a lifetime of nefarious activity that they have kept hidden from law enforcement. Now, however, Max has a problem. His doctor has told him to take it easy, and so Max has decided that the time has come for the family to retire. But when young actor Harry Murphy overhears the Bruschetti brothers planning changes to their organization, including the murder of a man in London who knows too much, he makes the well-intentioned if egregious mistake of trying to warn the Brushettis’ intended victim, and the brothers’ plans begin to unravel . . . At turns tense and funny, Once a Crooked Man is infused with the infectious charm that made David McCallum one of television’s longest running, most-beloved stars. Praise for Once a Crooked Man “Crackling, darkly comic.” —Parade “Pretty danged good.” —The Washington Post “Highly entertaining . . . McCallum respects the genre’s tenets, supplying the right amount of intrigue, violence, and sex for a well-plotted, action-packed tale.” —Associated Press
