Mother Tongue: The Story of the English Language

Product Information

But even setting issues like that aside, there are so many mistakes here, both in Bryson’s discussion of the English language itself and in his characterisation of the other languages he uses as comparatives. I picked this up thinking that Bryson had, in my experience, always been entertaining, witty and informative and that this was a topic of much interest to me, so how could I go wrong? While I found the book informative and mildly amusing, at the end of the day, it's still a book about the history of words. had committed 672 murders in the name of linguistic and cultural independence" (p35) is rather particular, to say the least. The middle portion of the book gets very involved in examining the evolution of English spellings and pronunciations as it moved from Old English to Modern English, and the further hiving off of American English from British English.

His next book, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, is a memoir of growing up in 1950s America, featuring another appearance from his old friend Stephen Katz. Of course, Bill Bryson couldn't have foreseen how the Internet would change English (it would be interesting to know). He had me in the first chapter as he proposed that part of the success of the language is the incredible richness of vocabulary (at the time of publication, the OED had 615,000 words), flexibility of usage, and relative simplicity, particularly in comparison to tonal languages of rendering the language in print.Equally fascinating are our various forms of wordplay, the ultimate of which must be the palindrome where a sentence says the same thing forwards and backwards (an example from the book: "A man, a plan, a canal, Panama. The only good thing I can say about this book is that it fired in me a greater interest in the subject, for which I turned to more accurate books by people who actually know their subject. As far as inconsistencies go, two stick with me: First Bryson tacitly identifies himself with Britain in the early part of the book, then later on as American. I don’t expect Bill Bryson to be clairvoyant, of course, and a book written in 1991 about the history of language can be forgiven for having predicted neither the rise of the internet nor the scientific breakthroughs that proved that modern humans and Neanderthals interbred.

Furthermore there is no preposition in any language that cannot be translated into at least three or four prepositions in English, nor are there any English prepositions that don't have numerous translations in the other language. Bill Bryson's classic Mother Tongue is a highly readable and hilarious tale of how English came to be the world's language. The Mother Tongue is the story of the evolution of the English language, from its humble beginnings as a Germanic tongue to what it has evolved into over the centuries.The book is entertaining and goes a long way to explain how English is spoken in so many parts of the world, much more so than Portuguese, another colonial language. Our team is made up of book lovers who are dedicated to sourcing and providing the best books for kids. The final bit of assholery is that he excuses British imperialism in Ireland and its policies both direct and indirect aimed at the destruction of the Irish language on the basis that, well, it’s given him more English-language literature to enjoy.

Bill Bryson’s classic Mother Tongue is a highly readable and hilarious tale of how English came to be the world’s language. Then there’s a strong undercurrent throughout of racialising language, making it reflect something both innate and straight-jacketing about those who speak non-English languages—“Orientals”, for example, are “inscrutable” who just can’t do honest business like those straight-talkin’ Anglo-Saxons. I started this with enthusiasm and was enjoying his breezy style until it occurred to me that a lot of what he was saying seemed to be anecdotal. However, I for one have generally and usually found Bryson’s general tone of narrational voice and the boastful, arrogant demeanour he constantly seems to present and yes indeed often downright spew in The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way extremely off-putting and really at best massively condescending, with his claims regarding the supposed superiority of the English language both unacademic and yes, profoundly bigoted and stereotyping (and as such of course absolutely devoid of any kind of linguistic acumen and actual bona fide language based knowledge).I stopped reading, thinking I might accidentally absorb some of the "facts" and perpetuate them myself! Bryson’s clearly lived in England long enough to have imbibed the British combativeness towards the French.

For all the little anecdotes and copious bits of trivia it contains, I really want to like the book more than I do. It is not included in promotions available to our main range products, as stated in our terms of service. When he becomes enamored on a topic (such as the history of our houses in "At Home" or the history of our universe in "A Short History of Nearly Everything") Bryson digs up all kinds of interesting facts and stories and anecdotes and puts it all together in a delightfully interesting collection of essays. anyone who has spent any time learning a language will tell you that all of them have words with dozens of meanings (Except maybe Esperanto? So if you are looking for an erudite and trustworthy account of the development of the English language I am sure there are many very worthy tomes out there!Bryson repeatedly shows that he doesn’t understand what he’s talking about when it comes to the English language. I think the lesson here is that as a linguist, I should not be reading popular writings about language. I don’t consider myself a word or language nerd at all, yet I loved all the trivia, such as those that I’ve quoted below. From its mongrel origins to its status as the world’s most-spoken tongue; its apparent simplicity to its deceptive complexity; its vibrant swearing to its uncertain spelling and pronunciation, Bryson covers all this as well as the many curious eccentricities that make it as maddening to learn as it is flexible to use.