'Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents'
Jo's words in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women are always with us as Christmas approaches and we search the shops, looking for something to suit people of so many different tastes. Lewis Carroll once described the variety of topics which can interest different people:
'The time has come,' the Walrus said, 'To talk of many things: Of shoes - and ships - and sealing wax - Of cabbages - and kings - And why the sea is boiling hot - And whether pigs have wings.
A language sandwich
Where does our vocabulary come from? How do word meanings change? How is our language really being used? Damp Squid: the English language laid bare, written by Jeremy Butterfield, is an entertaining book which explores all the key questions about the English language. Here are some short extracts from the book which discuss where words come from and how they are formed.
English has three main layers: at the bottom, chronologically, Anglo-Saxon or Old English; in the middle, varieties of French; as the top layer, Latin and Greek.
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