(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best etymology books

Algeo's British or American English? explores exactly this subject in considerable depth and with impressive organization. You^can^find^"free"^copies^online.

Off the top of my head, one obvious example is the use of the perfect tense. For me (a native British English speaker), use of the perfect is obligatory in many contexts (for example with "yet" or "already"), and use of the simple past is, in my native dialect, ungrammatical (for example, "*Did you eat yet?"). But American English allows both the perfect and simple past here.

EDIT: I should also mention the excellent blog Separated by a Common Language, written by a professional linguist who grew up in the US and now teaches in the UK. You can search it for particular topics (for example syntax).

I think The Only Grammar Book You'll Ever Need would be perfect for the basics. That's a good one. Truby's The Anatomy of Story is a great source as well.

Vonnegut, obviously; he's great. In terms of language itself, I recently finished https://www.amazon.ca/Story-English-100-Words/dp/125002420X - it's a small book, basically taking 100 English words and showing how they got here and where they began. Super fascinating!

I used to read a lot of linguistics papers, and I wish I saved the one I found that argued that learning language isn't just hard: it's IMPOSSIBLE. So we don't do it! Instead, we just APPROXIMATE it, a faded incorrect photocopy of the language our parents are speaking, but close enough in the ways that count that we're mutually intelligible. And that explains why language in general and slang in particular evolves so quickly: instead of a 100% copy we got a 95% one, and we're just filling in the blanks ourselves with whatever seems most likely.

Paradebeispiel?

Here's your IE root for caleō, etc, though the 'e' at the end should be a laryngeal. So, a totally different root from the cold root, with a different initial consonant.

A good accessible (in price and ease of use) source of (IE) etymology in general is the American Heritage Dictionary of the Indo-European Roots.

For Greek etymology, there's Beekes in English, or the more outdated Frisk and Chantraine. Of course, they're all excessively expensive. If I could find mine right now, I'd let you know what they say.

I'm pretty sure this is just coincidence, though.

The First Word is a good overview of research that has been done on the evolution of language and why it's such a difficult and controversial topic.

I did my senior seminar/thesis on the evolution of language and in addition to The First Word we started with these articles for a general look at the questions we have regarding evolution of language and what the answers may be.

• Bickerton, Derek. Language evolution: A brief guide for linguists. Lingua 117, 2007.
  
  
• Knight, Studdart-Kennedy, and Hurford. Language: A Darwinian Adaptation? The Evolutionary Emergence of Language, 2000.
  
• Christiansen and Kirby. Language evolution: consensus and controversies. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7, 2003
  
• Pinker, Steven. The Big Bang. The Language Instinct, 1994
  
• Pinker and Bloom. Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13, 1990
  
• Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch. The Faculty of Language: What is it, who has it and how did it evolve? Science 298, 2002
  
• Jackendoff and Pinker. The nature of the language faculty and its implications for the evolution of language (Reply to Fitch, Hauser and Chomsky). Cognition 97, 2005
  
  Edit: P.S. I haven't read Bickerton's Adam's Tongue, but I've read several of his articles and found them useful, so that title may also be worth having a look at.

There is actually an entire book written about the word OK. (I always use OK, for whatever reason.)

Here are two interesting articles about the book.

Wow what an incredible approach. Only 424円 on Amazon too!

https://www.amazon.co.jp/Learn-Japanese-Etymology-Approach-Symbolism-ebook/dp/B00WWYP1VA

I'm definitely buying this

If you don't mind forking over a few dollars, The Conlanger's Lexipedia is a pretty great book.

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The Best Punctuation Book, Period: A Comprehensive Guide for Every Writer, Editor, Student, and Businessperson

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Look at

https://www.amazon.com/English-Brushup-John-Langan/dp/0073513601

I use this book with really low level high school students. There are a lot of chapters we don't cover because we just don't have time but it definitely ramps up to more complex grammar skills.

We also had success with IXL (the grammar) online accounts but funding got cut last year so we switched to books.

Read a good book on English grammar. Oxford Press do good ones. Try here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Oxford-Grammar-Punctuation-John-Seely/dp/0199564671

Your chapter examples are very specific; the best you can do in book form is English Vocabulary in Use (Advanced).
Otherwise, use the lexical sets in the Macmillan online dictionary. This is the link for spices: https://www.macmillandictionary.com/thesaurus-category/british/herbs-spices-and-condiments

Not specifically about song writing, but I listened to Mark Forsyth's The Elements of Eloquence on audio book over the weekend and had my mind blown. It's a short listen, but leaves you incredibly awed at the skill of the author and inspired to employ the techniques.

I'm a big fan of this book. When I first started out, I would check what grammar I was teaching before the class, and read up on it in Swam's book to get a good grasp of it. Found it quite informative.

I read a book written my an etymologist that mentioned that the "bon fire" with the french origin was folk etymology, and that it was from bone fire, like the OP's link. The book was "Everything You Know About English Is Wrong", and was really interesting. I recall the author being pretty good about explaining his research and sources, but I read it a while ago, so I don't remember the details.

I think I found it and thought it would be useful here... wow this was a tough one. But the PDF (20mb) is in a less (apologies) "child-friendly" format but has the same content.
http://www.koto8.net/nihongo_learn.pdf

Img1: S-01; to suck; pdf page 52
Img2: K-01; to curve; pdf page 83
Img3: N-03; gluey; pdf page 10
Img4: T-05; to adhere; pdf page 75

It is from this book Learn Japanese From Etymology: Approach From Sound Symbolism by Watanabe Masamichi
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Learn-Japanese-Etymology-Approach-Symbolism-ebook/dp/B00WWYP1VA

This book is a compilation of Japanese-specific vocabulary. This book focuses only on pure Japanese vocabulary excluding Chinese vocabulary which is shown by the kanji. This book covers approximately 1,800 Japanese words in total, which 860 of them are explained with illustrations. It covers almost all Japanese words. The Book is classifying Japanese in the unique method. The consistent idea throughout the book is “there is a relationship between vocal sounds and meanings in the Japanese language”. The principle of Japanese word generation is shown. The former linguistic theory of origin was a hypothesis. At this book, vocabulary is classified on the basis of Japanese origin theory. It is useful actually, so the value of this theory will be demonstrated.

When I took a grammar class we used a textbook called Analyzing English Grammar which I found to be very useful.


Analyzing English Grammar (7th Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0205252524/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_BbNSBb67ECRWT

[Learn Spanish via Etymologies ](Learn Spanish via Etymologies: The Addictive Way To Learn Spanish Quickly https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BQVTYG9/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_9rTXBb7ZF74F1) — strongly recommended and based on SpanishEtymology

http://www.amazon.com/ESL-Beginner-English-Second-Language/dp/073861100X/ref=sr_1_2?s=mobile-apps&ie=UTF8&qid=1463501752&sr=8-2&keywords=learn+english+for+adults

Might be useful.

Plastic Words is good on that topic too.

https://www.amazon.com/Plastic-Words-Tyranny-Modular-Language/dp/0271024925

So, we live in a plastic-word, post-truth world now. Yikes.

Might be worth making the investment

Don't make me give you a lesson on time zones. You might want to check this out.

I'm assigning you some required reading.

The Blue Book of Grammar

The Only Grammar Book You'll Ever Need

The Elements of Style

Thank me later.

http://www.amazon.com/Only-Grammar-Book-Youll-Ever/dp/1580628559

I just bought this for under $10 its small and convient to take with me anywhere.

https://www.amazon.com/Only-Grammar-Book-Youll-Ever/dp/1580628559/ref=pd_ybh_a_5?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=XY524A04HA51XJYWP62S

I'm reading a grammar book right now (The Only Grammar Book You'll Ever Need) and it claims that using an apostrophe the way you mentioned is correct:

> There are a few rare instances when you use apostrophes to form plurals. The first is when you're writing abbreviations that have more than one period.

> M.D. = M.D.'s

We're just used to omitting the periods when using internet acronyms.

This is the most accurate etymology I've heard. There was recently a book written about it.

This is total bullshit by the way. OK was coined in 1839 but a newspaper editor.
This book goes into more details.