Just how did an inadequate, second-rate language become the most successful language in the world? The answer is: attitude. In welcoming and absorbing many outside influences, including French, Yiddish and African words and rhymes, English has been able to adapt to needs in almost every corner of the globe. Howard Richler shows that despite its not-so-great beginnings, the English language, with it's idiomatic structure, multiple word meanings and love of euphemisms, has evolved into a deeply sophisticated language. The flexibility of the English language is its great strength, and its great source of fascination. As modern culture grows, English finds itself embracing more and more concepts, and as such coinages: road rage, millennium bug, dotcom, dot bomb.