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Highly Irregular
- Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme - And Other Oddities of the English Language
- Narrated by: Arika Okrent
- Length: 5 hrs and 16 mins
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Publisher's summary
Maybe you've been speaking English all your life, or maybe you learned it later on. But whether you use it just well enough to get your daily business done or you're an expert with a red pen who never omits a comma or misplaces a modifier, you must have noticed that there are some things about this language that are just weird.
Perhaps you're reading a book and stop to puzzle over absurd spelling rules (Why are there so many ways to say "-gh"?), or you hear someone talking and get stuck on an expression (Why do we say "How dare you" but not "How try you"?), or your kid quizzes you on homework (Why is it "11 and 12" instead of "oneteen and twoteen"?). Suddenly you ask yourself, "Wait, why do we do it this way?" You think about it, try to explain it, and keep running into walls. It doesn't conform to logic. It doesn't work the way you'd expect it to. There doesn't seem to be any rule at all.
There might not be a logical explanation, but there will be an explanation, and this book is here to help.
In Highly Irregular, Arika Okrent answers these questions and many more. Along the way she tells the story of the many influences - from invading French armies to stubborn Flemish printers - that made our language the way it is today. Both an entertaining send-up of linguistic oddities and a deeply researched history of English, Highly Irregular is essential for anyone who has paused to wonder about our marvelous mess of a language.
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Born to Kvetch
- Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods
- By: Michael Wex
- Narrated by: Michael Wex
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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As the main spoken language of the Jews for more than a thousand years, Yiddish has had plenty to lament, plenty to conceal. Its phrases and expressions paint a comprehensive picture of the mind-set that enabled the Jews of Europe to survive persecution: they never stopped kvetching about God, gentiles, children, and everything else.
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Fascinating, but...
- By Christopher B. on 04-05-16
By: Michael Wex
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The Glamour of Grammar
- By: Roy Peter Clark
- Narrated by: Roy Peter Clark
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Early in the history of English, glamour and grammar were the same word, linked to enchantment and magical spells. Now grammar brings to mind language bullies and bored-out-of-their-skulls students. Roy Peter Clark, one of America’s most influential writing teachers, wants to change that by putting the glamour back into grammar.
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Wasteful
- By ABID on 12-05-13
By: Roy Peter Clark
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You Say Potato: A Book About Accents
- By: Ben Crystal, David Crystal
- Narrated by: David Crystal, Ben Crystal, Jane Savage, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Some people say 'sconn' while others say 'schown'. He says 'bath' while she says 'bahth'. You say 'potayto'. I say 'potahto'. And - wait a second, no one says 'potahto'. No one's ever said 'potahto'. Have they? From reconstructing Shakespeare's accent to the rise and fall of received pronunciation, actor Ben Crystal and his linguist father, David, travel the world in search of the stories of spoken English.
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Wish there were more native recordings.
- By Matt Dobler on 07-01-16
By: Ben Crystal, and others
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The Elements of Eloquence
- Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase
- By: Mark Forsyth
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In his inimitably entertaining and wonderfully witty style, he takes apart famous phrases and shows how you too can write like Shakespeare or quip like Oscar Wilde. Whether you’re aiming to achieve literary immortality or just hoping to deliver the perfect one-liner, The Elements of Eloquence proves that you don’t need to have anything important to say - you simply need to say it well.
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Who knew rhetoric could be so much fun?
- By Philo on 10-30-14
By: Mark Forsyth
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The Pun Also Rises
- How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics
- By: John Pollack
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 4 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The Pun Also Rises is an authoritative yet playful exploration of a practice that is common, in one form or another, to virtually every language on earth. At once entertaining and educational, this engaging book answers fundamental questions: Just what is a pun, and why do people make them? How did punning impact the development of human language, and how did that drive creativity and progress? And why, after centuries of decline, does the pun still matter?
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Punderful Little Book
- By B. Lane on 01-10-13
By: John Pollack
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Poetry in Person
- Twenty-five Years of Conversation with America's Poets
- By: Lucille Clifton, Alexander Neubauer - editor, Eamon Grennan, and others
- Narrated by: Alexander Neubauer
- Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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This first audio edition of Poetry in Person: 25 Years of Conversation with America’s Poets (Knopf, 2010), invites listeners into an intimate classroom with eight acclaimed poets. Full of compelling, in-depth conversation about manuscripts and drafts by the poets themselves, plus readings of the finished poems, these historic recordings offer one of the most detailed portraits ever produced of how poems are actually made.
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Fascinating
- By d on 08-28-16
By: Lucille Clifton, and others
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Semicolon
- The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark
- By: Cecelia Watson
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 3 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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A pause-resisting, existential romp through the life and times of the world’s most polarizing punctuation mark. Through her rollicking biography of the semicolon, Watson writes a guide to grammar that explains why we don’t need guides at all and refocuses our attention on the deepest, most primary value of language: true communication.
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Silly me; I thought it was about semicolons
- By Jeffrey D on 08-15-19
By: Cecelia Watson
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How to Speak and Write Correctly
- By: Joseph Devlin
- Narrated by: Shawn Grisden
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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This book has no pretension about it whatever -- it is neither a Manual of Rhetoric, expatiating on the dogmas of style, nor a Grammar full of arbitrary rules and exceptions. It is merely an effort to help ordinary, everyday people to express themselves in ordinary, everyday language, in a proper manner.
By: Joseph Devlin
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The Awful German Language
- By: Mark Twain
- Narrated by: Cathy Dobson
- Length: 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Mark Twain's classic satire on the German language. A must read for anybody learning German or living in a German-speaking country. "The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the other half at the end of it. Can anyone conceive of anything more confusing than that?"
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This is a terrific piece of writing!
- By SandyJ on 05-24-13
By: Mark Twain
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Memory Craft
- Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
- By: Lynne Kelly
- Narrated by: Nancy Linari
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Groundbreaking anthropologist and memory champion Lynne Kelly reveals how we can use ancient and traditional mnemonic methods to enhance and expand our memory.
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So grateful this is on Audible!
- By happy_reader on 02-19-22
By: Lynne Kelly
What listeners say about Highly Irregular
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Carol J. Dallinger
- 03-31-24
Book content
Fascinating book about the origins of the strange and unusual spelling, words, and phrases used in the English language. Brilliantly and interestingly written and read by the author.
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- Brian
- 10-06-21
Hwæt the hell English
If you enjoy words or history or both this is a history of words in English about English by an English speaking non-Englishmen.
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- Paul Homsy
- 10-06-21
Fabulous Book on Language
A fun and great book about the English Language. Loved the format and great bits of info that I have not seen anywhere else. I hope we have more books coming from this author!
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- Lana BStar
- 02-01-24
A fun romp through the ever changing English language!
This book is a delight. If you’ve ever enjoyed looking up the etymology of a word or phrase you will love this book. The author manages to make what to some might sound like a dry subject a highly entertaining and engaging listen! Also, I’m impressed that the author is such an excellent narrator -what an all-around talent!
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- Josh
- 05-13-22
So interesting!
Loved this book, the depth on some of the more specific quirks in English is honestly the perfect level of entertainment at certain times and this book nails it. To think I could I have studied linguistics and been able to enjoy this as a profession, I feel like I'm missing out!
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- Kindle Customer
- 05-11-24
Quick Hits of Knowledge
I’ve read a few books on the history of English, and this stands out because of its organization. Each short chapter covers a question you might have about a quirk of English, describing the issue with examples and explaining how our language ended up like this.
The tone is conversational and irreverent without being vulgar. The explanations seem to be thorough, and often brought up counter-examples or parallel cases which I hadn’t considered before.
The book is well-suited to audio, with the author doing a fine job with the Old and Middle English, Germanic and Latin language examples she uses. (Don’t let that alarm you, it happens infrequently as most of the topics don’t require it.)
The short chapters (-10 minutes each) are long enough to feel you’ve understood her points and give you a good place to stop when your commute is over, or to encourage you to listen to “just one more” if you’re a bungee.
Highly recommended.
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