This is the fully revised and expanded second edition of English - One Tongue, Many Voices, a book by three internationally distinguished English language scholars who tell the fascinating, improbable saga of English in time and space. Chapters trace the history of the language from its obscure beginnings over 1500 years ago as a collection of dialects spoken by marauding, illiterate tribes. They show how the geographical spread of the language in its increasing diversity has made English into an international language of unprecedented range and variety. The authors examine the present state of English as a global language and the problems, pressures and uncertainties of its future, online and offline. They argue that, in spite of the amazing variety and plurality of English, it remains a single language.

Jan Svartvik is Emeritus Professor at the University of Lund, Sweden. He is co-author ofA Communicative Grammar of English (with Geoffrey Leech) andA Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (with Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum and Geoffrey Leech). He has published on other varied aspects of English linguistics, such as corpus linguistics, forensic linguistics, contrastive grammar and nautical terminology. He is a Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, The Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities and Academia Europaea.
Geoffrey Leech (1935-2014) was Research Professor of Linguistics at Lancaster University, UK. Author, co-author, or co-editor of some 25 books and 100 papers or articles on varied aspects of linguistics and the English language, he was a Fellow of the British Academy and a Member of Academia Europaea. He was the author of widely usedExplorations in Semantics and Pragmatics, co-author with Mike Short ofA Linguistic Guide to English Poetry, and co-author with Margaret Deuchar and Robert Hoogenraad ofEnglish Grammar for Today: A New Introduction.
David Crystal is Honorary Professor of Linguistics at the University of Bangor. He is the author or editor of over a hundred books on aspects of linguistics and the English language, such asThe Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language,The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language,The Stories of English,Language and the Internet, andEvolving English. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and in 1995 was awarded an OBE for services to the English Language.

-1 English ­­ the working tongue of the global village. -PART I: History of an island language. -2 The first 500 years. -3 1066 and All That. -4 Modern English in the making. -PART II: The spread of English around the world. -5 English goes to the New World. -6 English transplanted. -7 English varieties in the British Isles. -8 American and British English. -9 English, pidgins and creoles. -PART III: A changing language in changing times. -10 The standard language today. -11 Linguistic change in progress: Back to the Inner Circle. -12 Electronic English. -13 English into the future. -Notes: Comments and References. -References. -Index of people. -Index of topics. -Pronunciation