Containing tales of historical-sociolinguistic detection, this book provides a unique insight into how language contact shapes varieties of English.

Peter Trudgill is Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway.

Prologue: colonisation and contact; 1. What really happened to Old English?; 2. East Anglian English and the Spanish Inquisition; 3. On Anguilla and The Pickwick Papers; 4. The last Yankee in the Pacific; 5. An American lack of dynamism; 6. Colonial lag?; 7. 'The new non-rhotic style'; 8. What became of all the Scots?; Epilogue: the critical threshold and interactional synchrony.