Righting the Mother Tongue | David Wolman | Talks at Google
2,263 views · Published 13 April 2009 · 50:24 · Indexed 27 September 2026
Channel: Talks at Google · 2009 · Education
David Wolman visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book "Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling." This event took place on March 26, 2009, as part of the Authors@Google series. Righting the Mother Tongue tells the cockamamie story of English spelling. When did ghost acquire its silent 'h'? Will cyberspace kill the one in rhubarb? And was it really rocket scientists who invented spell-check? Seeking to untangle the twisted story of English spelling, David Wolman takes us on a wordly adventure from English battlefields to Google headquarters. Along the way, he pickets with spelling reformers outside the national spelling bee, visits the town in Belgium, not England, where the first English books were printed, and takes a road-trip with the boss at Merriam-Webster Inc. The journey is punctuated by spelling battles waged by the likes of Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster, Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie and the members of today's Simplified Spelling Society. David Wolman is the author of A Left-Hand Turn Around the World and writes for magazines such as Wired, Newsweek, Outside, National Geographic Traveler and New Scientist. He lives in Portland, OR.
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