Language Myths

Peter Trudgill and Laurie Bauer are both respected linguists. Trudgill has written many books for Penguin (including Sociolinguistics which has sold 130,000 copies since it was first published in 1974). Other contributors include Jean Aitchison (Professor of Language at Oxford), Lars Gunnar-Andersson (co-author of Bad Language with Trudgill) and Janet Holmes (Women, Men and Politeness, 1995, Longman). Peter Trudgill lives in Lausanne (and sometimes Norwich.) Laurie Bauer lives in New Zealand.

A Note on the ContributorsIntroduction Myth 1: The Meanings of Words Should Not be Allowed to Vary or Change: Peter Trudgill Myth 2: Some Languages Are Just Not Good Enough: Ray Harlow Myth 3: The Media Are Ruining English: Jean Aitchison Myth 4: French is a Logical Language: Anthony Lodge Myth 5: English Spelling is Kattastroffik: Edward Carney Myth 6: Women Talk Too Much: Janet Holmes Myth 7: Some Languages Are Harder than Others: Lars-Gunnar Andersson Myth 8: Children Can't Speak or Write Properly Any More: James Milroy Myth 9: In the Appalachians They Speak like Shakespeare: Michael Montgomery Myth 10: Some Languages Have No Grammar: Winifred Bauer Myth 11: Italian is Beautiful, German is Ugly: Howard Giles and Nancy Niedzielski Myth 12: Bad Grammar is Slovenly: Leslie Milroy Myth 13: Black Children are Verbally Deprived: Walt Wolfram Myth 14: Double Negatives Are Illogical: Jenny Cheshire Myth 15: TV Makes People Sound the Same: J. K. Chambers Myth 16: You Shouldn't Say "It Is Me" because "Me" is Accusative: Laurie Bauer Myth 17: They Speak Really Bad English Down South and in New York City: Dennis R. Preston Myth 18: Some Languages Are Spoken More Quickly than Others: Peter Roach Myth 19: Aborigines Speak a Primitive Lanugage: Nicholas Evans Myth 20: Everyone Has an Accent Except Me: John H. Esling Myth 21: America is Ruining the English Language: John Algeo Index