This book allows a reader with a background in computing to quickly learn about the principles of human language and computational methods for processing it. The book discusses what natural language processing (NLP) is, where it is useful, and how it can be deployed using modern software tools. It covers the core topics of modern NLP, including an overview of the syntax and semantics of English, benchmark tasks for computational language modelling, and higher level tasks and applications that analyze or generate language. It takes the perspective of a computer scientist. The primary themes are abstraction, data, algorithms, applications and impacts. It also includes history and trends that are important for understanding why things have been done the way that they have.