Concise Oxford Companion to The English LanguageCovers numerous aspects of the English language: Cockney to Creole, Aboriginal English to South Asian English. The historical range of the work is large - Beowulf rubs shoulders with Ebonics, Chaucer sits alongside Chomsky, Latin, and the World Wide Web. Substantial entries are given on key subjects such as American and British differences, computing, etymology, pidgin, poetry, sexism, Shakespeare's language, and slang.
