From a grunt to a tweet and more

Planet Word was a five-part TV series screened in Britain and hosted by Stephen Fry, who, apart from not playing for Manchester United, appears on British TV screens as often as Prince William and Catherine. It got so-so reviews, but I'm sure Planet Word the book will do much better.

Even though it feels like a rehash of books I've read in the past, with J.P. Davidson at the helm it steers a steady course from chapters that explain why we can talk but chimps can't, to the one that explains why texting is replacing talking, a sort of monkey business if ever here was one.

It is handsomely bound and printed on high quality stock. I can see Planet Word sitting on the top shelves of better-class bookcases, out of reach of younger family members interested in the seven most widely-used swear words in the language.

Unfortunately, New Zealand doesn't get a mention, although Russell Crowe and John Clarke figure in the chapter on Australian slang, identified as Australians.

Oh, well, you can't win 'em all; and though Planet Word is a rehash, it's an easy-to-read, informative and often amusing one, which can be read chapter by chapter with no loss of continuity. After all, although language has a beginning, there's no ending in sight.

So savour the five lengthy chapters over glasses of mulled wine and cups of hot cocoa; discover how written language evolved from marks on clay tablets, how men devoted their lives to decipher the earliest forms of non-verbal communication, how writers and comedians got away with double-entrendre risque language, how slang evolved, and much more; with hundreds of illustrations, information and quotes by the truckload to tickle the membranes, stir the blood, and perhaps make you cry:
      "He was my North, my South, my East my West,
      My working week and my Sunday rest,
      My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song,
      I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong."
(W.H. Auden)
or
"A new word is added to the English language every 98 minutes"; "Neither 'Peking' or 'Beijing' really reproduce the sound the Chinese make when they mention their capital city";

"The Simpsons has taken over from Shakespeare as our culture's greatest source of idioms, catchphrases and sundry textual allusions"; etc, etc.

• Ian Williams is a Dunedin writer and composer.