New in paperback. Hardcover was published in 2021. This is an illustrated history of English as told through all the things that are weird about it. Why are there so many silent letters? Why do we have irregular verbs? What is the deal with the word 'colonel'? The weirdness of English can be blamed on specific influences that shaped it, and in this book Arika Okrent investigates the many puzzles of our language to show how English came to be the way it is today.