When and why did ''thou'' disappear from Standard English? Would a Victorian Cockney have said ''observation'' or ''hobservation''? Was Jane Austen making a mistake when she wrote ''Jenny and James are walked to Charmonth this afternoon''?This superbly well-informed - and also wonderfully entertaining - history of the English language answers all these questions, showing how the many strands of English (Standard English, dialect and slang among them) developed to create the richly-varied language of today.