The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson★★★★☆

It’s not my fault and other wonderful things I learned from this book!

Non Fiction – Humanities

272 pages

Publication Date: September 1, 1991

 

This book provides a very interesting and thought provoking look into the development, history, and eccentricities of the English language.  From the words formed through error-sweetard to sweetheart and buttonhold to buttonhole(pg. 71), adoption- ketchup from China and shampoo from India (pg. 73), and creation-fun, gloat and blizzard to the evolution of words like girl-originally used during Chaucer’s day to mean any young person, whether male or female (pg. 78).  To the quirks without explanation: such as less meaning a negative but not in the case of priceless (pg 81) and the strange pronunciation of words like: paid-said, heard-beard, and low-how (pg. 85).  Bill Bryson explorers them all and even more in this book.

This fascinating subject raises some very interesting concepts (like the fact my grammar and punctuation problems are not my fault, but the fault of inconsistencies in English, and I have to tell you I’m glad to hear it.  Take that with a raspberry I blow in your general direction every teacher I ever had trying to make me conform to their ideas of correct grammar and punctuation.).   The writing was well done and densely packed with information.  I’m usually a fairly fast reader, but with the amount of information this book conveys I found myself moving at a much slower pace and I believe it may take a few readings to really grasp all of the ideas.  Also, be aware of the fatigue factor as your brain tries to absorb the information; this is not a book you can just breeze through.  The Mother Tongue has been touted by many as witty-particularly those trying to sell it.  While I did find it very intriguing and marginally amusing, Bryson’s anecdotes never crossed over to outright funny for me.

It should be noted some controversy surrounds Bryson's conclusions and examples.  Several other reviewers claim The Mother Tongue is full of inaccuracies; I cannot either validate this opinion or dismiss it.  I just don’t know enough about the subject to weigh in.  I would, however, be very interested in seeing an updated version of this book to see what changes of opinion Bryson would make with more current information or the inaccuracies he saw fit to fix, if any.  My advice would be to not take everything he says as the gospel truth (skepticism if used properly can be a friend).  And as with any vaguely scholarly subject, if you are really interested, do your own research. Ask questions like, does his information match up with what you already know?  Look at the validity of his source material, read more recent articles and books on the subject, and figure out whether you would come to the same conclusions as Bryson (remember critical thinking from your college days, yeah it can apply to real life) .

ISBN 0380715430 (ISBN13: 9780380715435)