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Weeds in the Garden of Words : Further Observations on the Tangled History of the English Language by Kate Burridge is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

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In Weeds in the Garden of Words, linguist Kate Burridge compares the English language to a garden. There are some flowers that look lovely, but your neighbor, who considers herself a gardening expert, says they are weeds. Should you follow her advice and root them up? Maybe it depends on your definition of weed. Taking a completely different approach from verbal hygienists (Burridge's phrase) such as the ever-cranky Lynne Truss (Eats, Shoots & Leaves), Burridge observes the evolution of English, without making judgments. She discovers that quite often, what is now considered correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, or pronunciation, used to be considered wrong. And vice versa. Because language is always changing, it's difficult to pin it down at any point in time and declare once and for all that the double negative is wrong and that the direct object form of "who" must be "whom." When people are using "incorrect" English every day and still managing to communicate effectively, who's to say what's wrong? Well, there are always plenty of self-appointed fusspots and arbiters of linguistic goodness (as Burridge calls them) who want everyone to follow the rules they learned when the

Who reads Weeds in the Garden of Words : Further Observations on the Tangled History of the English Language?

Author

Kate Burridge

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (Virtual Publishing)

Published

2005

Language

EN

ISBN

9780521618236

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

History, Language Learning, Literary Fiction

Rating

3.65 / 5 (37 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14