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)
