MAY WE BORROW YOUR LANGUAGE?
How English has Stolen, Purloined, Snaffled, Pilfered, Appropriated and Looted Words from all Four Corners of the World
Philip Gooden
Head of Zeus/Speaking Tiger
359 pages; Rs 799
Philip Gooden, who writes books about language as well as historical crime novels, calls the English language “a great borrower, a practiced thief.” May We Borrow Your Language? examines the linguistic peculiarities of English, and how the language has borrowed and “stolen” words from other languages down the centuries — from the seventh century to the twenty-first. It is necessarily selective, and the choice of words is random.
