OUR LANGUAGE EXPLAINED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23339, 6 May 1939, Page 4 (Supplement)

OUR LANGUAGE EXPLAINED

Background of English

By J.H.H.

INTENDED primarily "for foreign students of English, "This English Language," by Sir E. Denison Ross, will nevertheless be welcomed by all thoughtful readers. Just as many families have household words and expressions of their own invention which are meaningless to outsiders, so has each nation a fund of allusion which is often unintelligible to foreigners. In English this linguistic background is exceptionally rich; in fact it is doubtful whether any other language is so bountifully endowed.

In addition to tho Bible, tho Prayer Book, well-known hymns and tho works of Shakespeare and other poetß, certain proso works of imagination, with which most Englishmen are familiar, must he included in our national heritage; and of these the author names, as the four most famous, "The Pilgrim's Progress," " Robinson Crusoe," " Gulliver's Travels" and "Alice in Wonderland." "All of them," he says, "have enriched tho everyday vocabulary with names and phrases which can only be understood by those who know something of the tale from which they come"; and he goes on to cite a number from each.

Lists of quotations, well-known expressions and stock-phrases, songs and nursery rhymes, characters from history and fiction, and other miscellaneous words and names of a similar origin, all go to make tip what must be a very valuable publication.

"This English 'Language," by Sir E. Deniaon Boss (Longmans, Green).