Rating: 
Summary: A Closer Watch....
Review: Hey,
yes a 12 and a half year old read this book. Why might u ask? No I do not reguarly listen to NPR radio to hear Mr. Nunberg speak. But let's say a close member of his family connected me with his...information. I had othing better to read so I dove right in. Some parts I admit were complicated but this book can actually hit some teenagers little experiances of childern his daughter(Sophie) and just slang terms can find many points of this book good. He writes about everything starting with "The Choice of Sophie" talking about choosing names ect..this is a good book. yeah I recomend it for adults but if yr a kid and wanna try something REALLY NEW knock yrself out.
Rating:
Summary: Clearing Your Throat Before You Talk, by fermed
Review: I can think of few people who would not benefit from a short marination --or a long one-- in this book. It is because most of my friends are talker and thinkers, and this book is so wide ranging that it is bound to benefit those who take pride in, or pay attention to, what they utter. Marinade: "a savory usu. acidic sauce in which meat, fish or a vegetable is soaked to enrich its flavor or to tenderize it." Acidic, even acerbic, characterizes the book; and acid often sharpens our thoughts. For example, most of us laughed at (and decried) the actions of the mayor of Washington, Anthony Williams, when he fired a white aid who had characterized the city's budget as being "niggardly." We laughed at the sheer ignorance of those who would take issue with a racially neutral word that simply means "stingy." We looked up the etymology of the word and found that it has Swedish ancestry and nothing to do with the "n" word, or the Niger river, or the color black. But wait: surely the word contains offensive sounds to which black Americans are entitled to react. The book calls these sounds "echoes of its homonyms," a felicitous expression; and then the rule: Phonetics always trumps etymology. Whose rule? Nunberg's, of course, who adds: "We all learned that when we were six as we discovered the scatological pleasure there would be in pronouncing an innocent word like "shampoo."Quickly, without looking it up: the difference between "masterly" and "masterful." Quickly, without looking it up, clarify the usage of "on behalf of" and "in behalf of." Parlor games or lexicography? This is a book rich in more ways than I can count. It makes you think, and perhaps makes you think before you talk. Such a blessing! And if not for you, it will please one of your talkative buddies, for sure.
Rating:
Summary: A treasure trove for language lovers
Review: I could have read this book in one sitting but had to pace myself so that I would still have some of it to read. Geoff Nunberg is a masterful user of the English language. His knowledge is vast; his references include corporations, television, movies, sports, teenagers, history, psychology, myths, and literature. He throws in words and phrases in French, German, Yiddish, Latin, and Italian as naturally as he speaks English. This book will have a place on my shelf along with those by Richard Lederer, William Safire, Edwin Newman, and John Ciardi.
Rating:
Summary: A Closer Watch....
Review: If you enjoy Nunberg's commentaries on NPR, this is a book worth buying, and a lot of fun to read. However, as a nearly-verbatim transcription of past radio broadcasts, I'm afraid to say that reading it doesn't quite have the same effect as listening to it. You may discover that some of the essays have less intellectual substance than you once thought when you heard it on Fresh Air. While you still get Nunberg's cool wit and lots of neat tidbits of linguistic history, it often seems he is merely vocalizing some common-sense observations that we laypersons could have come up with ourselves.
Rating: 
Summary: Witty and Insightful
Review: Language is how we interact and bring meaning to the world-all those things which we value we also name. This is what makes Geoffrey Nunberg's work as a linguistics professor at Stanford so interesting and it is just that fascinating field of study which he shares with us in this book. I was first introduced to Nunberg through his work on NRP's Fresh Air and this book's short essay format nicely parallel's the commentaries that he has produced there.
Casting a wide net Nunberg looks at a wide range of subjects in this book, from political speech to language of business. He not only is a keen observer of how these areas of speech are changing but also is able to penetrate to what those changes really mean about our society all with an intelligent wit.
While in the end I think I still prefer his expertly delivered NRP pieces they always leave me wanting more-and his written work is just that!
Rating:
Summary: Fun Stuff for Language Lovers
Review: Language lovers of all kinds will enjoy Nunberg's wit and insight. I thoroughly enjoyed his observations, etymologies, analogies, and often humorous commentary of modern English usage. Linguists are, by necessity, sticklers -- yet Nunberg refuses to give credence to arbitrary rules and is more than willing to accommodate the inevitable shifts in our language. He even defended the use of one of my favorite expressions: "Whatever!" According to Nunberg, it "signals your sublime indifference to whatever your interlocutor is trying to say to you." And yet I couldn't agree more when he chafes at trendy corporate communication -- everything from "thought leadership" to PowerPoint. It's all great fun. This is one book I won't be passing on to others. I'll be enjoying it myself for years to come.
Rating: 
Summary: Short on information, long on personal trivia
Review: Thanks to my habitual avoidance of radio/TV I'm completely unfamiliar with Mr. Nunberg's radio show. Instead I use the resulting "spare" time to pursue many esoteric intrests such as the history of words and phrases. Although I had doubts about a book based on an NPR program, several positive reviews convinced me "The Way We Talk Now" would add to my store of knowledge. After reading this book, I'm certain my abstention is to be commended.
The book would appeal to regular listeners of his show (and a certain class of pseudo-intellectuals in general), but I found his chatty style tiring and I didn't learn anything that I couldn't easily find elsewhere. Only a concern for accidentally damaging some young child's mind stopped me from tossing it out before I was finished. Certainly I wasn't expecting a formal, eurdite work, but his book wasn't even particularly entertaining, let alone informative on its purported subject.
The occasional gem amongst the many clods of dirt wasn't worth the toil. If you enjoy dated stories about the .com years, or many snore-inducing personal stories, this is the book you've been looking for all these years. Otherwise... the works of William F. Buckley Jr. are significantly more informative (and funnier too). And please don't settle for political discourse posing as wit; for the real stuff you could do worse than Chesterton or Wodehouse.
Rating:
Summary: Dripping with Charm!
Review: This books is a series of monologues from the NPR radio series, Fresh Air. The storytelling style transfers well to written form; Nunberg is easy to read and understand, and in addition he's a very likeable person, a somewhat scarce trait in those who analyze the use of English. Rather than the typical bashing of those who use English incorrectly, the book is a series of essays analyzing current use and underlying trends, while providing historical background and just enough humor for spice. Highly recommended, especially if you like Bill Bryson's works such as The Mother Tongue.
Rating:
Summary: Dripping with Charm!
Review: This books is a series of monologues from the NPR radio series, Fresh Air. The storytelling style transfers well to written form; Nunberg is easy to read and understand, and in addition he's a very likeable person, a somewhat scarce trait in those who analyze the use of English. Rather than the typical bashing of those who use English incorrectly, the book is a series of essays analyzing current use and underlying trends, while providing historical background and just enough humor for spice. Highly recommended, especially if you like Bill Bryson's works such as The Mother Tongue.
Rating:
Summary: Witty and Insightful
Review: This collection of short, pithy pieces from linguist Geoffrey Nunberg's public radio broadcasts on "Fresh Air" explore a broad range of topics, from country music to the French Revolution, from teen speak through the ages to the euphemisms of all the 'isms. But mostly he explores the evolution of popular culture as revealed in the way we use words. Humorous, witty and engaging, Nunberg's breezy pieces show a remarkable depth of research and thoughtfulness in posing such questions as why movies have given us so many memorable phrases and television so few, and how we choose names for our children. He number crunches all the words at the Republican convention into five sentences, explores the history and longevity of slang, the emotional power of words, the evolution of meanings. Insightful and enjoyable, these soundbites help us see how language reflects us, as we are and as we prefer to see ourselves.
|
