Inventing English: a portable history of the language

Introduction: finding English, finding us

Caedmon learns to sing : Old English and the origins of poetry

From Beowulf to Wulfstan : the language of Old English literature

In this year : the politics of language and the end of Old English

From kingdom to realm : middle English in a French world

Lord of this langage : Chaucer's English

I is an Ille a millere as are ye : Middle English dialects

The great vowel shift and the changing character of English

Chancery, Caxton, and the making of English prose

I do, I will : Shakespeare's English

A universal hubbub wild : new words and worlds in early modern English

Visible speech : the Orthoepists and the origins of standard English

A harmless drudge : Samuel Johnson and the making of the dictionary

Horrid, hooting stanzas : Lexicography and literature in American English

Antses in the sugar : dialect and regionalism in American English

Hello, dude : Mark Twain and the making of the American idiom

Ready for the funk : African American English and its impact

Pioneers through an untrodden forest : the Oxford English dictionary and its readers

Listening to Private Ryan : war and language

He speaks in your voice : everybody's English

Appendix: English sounds and their representation.