Reviews for New History of the Grecian States

The average rating for New History of the Grecian States based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-04-07 00:00:00 Michael Rivera I enjoyed reading this very much. However, the first several chapters were much more interesting than the later few chapters (particularly the last chapter). Perhaps that's partly because the relatively clear explanations of Indo-European (and Germanic and Old English, etc.) were novel to me. This text is quite accessible to the non-linguist, which was mainly my reason for buying it. The author explains the various language groups descending from Indo-European to modern English. The discussions of Germanic, and its offshoots, East Germanic, North Germanic, and West Germanic, as well as the languages that developed from them (including some dead languages such as Gothic) were fascinating. The author does a pretty good job of showing how these older languages can be seen to have elements that have persisted (or, in some cases, reappeared) in modern English. As a native speaker of English and a part-time language learner of German, I enjoyed learning the hows and whys and wherefores that explain some of the complex elements that show how related these languages are in many ways and how unrelated they are in others. Indo-European had eight cases? Really? Yuck. The author uses tables to show similarities in letters, sounds, words, and phrases. He also uses some familiar texts to help the reader along. All of this was fantastic. On the negative side, the later chapters (particularly the last, "The Future of English") dragged a bit in going on about modern English and its future. Spelling reform? Really? In a language that has many borrowed words from other languages and is spoken in a ridiculous number of dialects? I think the author had a bit too much to drink on that day. So, the last chapter or so was not too enlightening, other than making the author look a bit unbalanced in his prognostications about the language. Of course, the author's predictions about e-books and accessibility and such have all been true for some time, partly proven by the fact that I read his book via Kindle! Some notes with regard to reading on an electronic device: I read this on my Kindle (partly on the old Kindle keyboard and partly on the Kindle paperwhite) and the tables and diagrams are rather tiny on a standard Kindle. They might be fine on a DX. I tried them on the iPad app and they are fine there because of the zoom feature. Another issue with reading on the Kindle (that may or may not be an issue in printed form) was the author's use of IPA symbols. They inevitably were tiny and could not be increased in size on the Kindle (unlike the rest of the text) nor on the iPad Kindle app.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-01-05 00:00:00 Niels Olsen This book is incredibly good. Very interesting and useful for any one wanting to learn more about English from the very beginning. I have actually learned a lot from it. It easily became one of my favorites, especially in the assigned reads category.