I always love a good book about why English seems to make no sense. Okrent breaks down English's oddities into conflicts of words usage changing among the different languages of various invaders of Britain, the biggest being the Norman invasion which lead to centuries of the elite speaking French while the commoners spoke English. The introduction of the printing press lead to attempts of standardization for words that previously had no standard spelling, but localized so that they didn't always end up logically applied. Then in the 19th century, classically trained scholars tried to apply the standards of Greek and Latin to the unruly English language, causing more problems in the long run. Event today English is evolving and changing in weird ways while still oddly being a successful means of communication among people who use the language. The book is broken up into short chapters so it can be read all at once or broken up to be read at one's leisure. ( )

I have been really enjoying Arika Okrent's new book on the weird and wonderful (did I mention weird?) little nooks and crannies of our English tongue.

If you ever wondered why a thing can be "uncouth" but never "couth", why we can name someone the "Sexiest Man Alive" but not the Sexiest Man 'Blond' and why "could", "would" and "should" have those silly silent L's -- this is a book for you.

The book is subtitled, "What the Hell, English?" and the tone ranges from wryly exasperated to down right "WTF?". The charming little cartoon illustrations add a lot.

A Fun book to pick and read at random or to sit down and read right through it, which is what I did.

Why Clifford is a Big, Red, Dog and not a Red, Big Dog is covered in here too. (And try explaining THAT to a non native speaker!).

For Word Nerds. I suspect there are a lot of us around here. ( )