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Average customer rating:

Peters out after awhile
How English became the No. 1 world language
Browsing for Word Lovers
Lots of fluff, not much substance
Entertaining, even if flawed

The Mother Tongue
Bill Bryson
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0380715430

Amazon.com

Who would have thought that a book about English would be so entertaining? Certainly not this grammar-allergic reviewer, but The Mother Tongue pulls it off admirably. Bill Bryson--a zealot--is the right man for the job. Who else could rhapsodize about "the colorless murmur of the schwa" with a straight face? It is his unflagging enthusiasm, seeping from between every sentence, that carries the book.

Bryson displays an encyclopedic knowledge of his topic, and this inevitably encourages a light tone; the more you know about a subject, the more absurd it becomes. No jokes are necessary, the facts do well enough by themselves, and Bryson supplies tens per page. As well as tossing off gems of fractured English (from a Japanese eraser: "This product will self-destruct in Mother Earth."), Bryson frequently takes time to compare the idiosyncratic tongue with other languages. Not only does this give a laugh (one word: Welsh), and always shed considerable light, it also makes the reader feel fortunate to speak English.

Book Description

With dazzling wit and astonishing insight, Bill Bryson--the acclaimed author of The Lost Continent--brilliantly explores the remarkable history, eccentricities, resilience and sheer fun of the English language. From the first descent of the larynx into the throat (why you can talk but your dog can't), to the fine lost art of swearing, Bryson tells the fascinating, often uproarious story of an inadequate, second-rate tongue of peasants that developed into one of the world's largest growth industries.

Customer Reviews:

Peters out after awhile.......2007-06-24

The first half of this book is an eminently enjoyable breeze through the history of the English language, and its roots in Scandinavia, Germany, and French, as well as a fun romp through the way English spelling and grammar changed over time. Unfortunately, as the book went on, it started to lose steam and the thesis started getting stretched pretty thin. I managed to slog through and finish it, but I can't recommend it.

How English became the No. 1 world language.......2007-05-12

I have read this book several times and immensely enjoy it every time. Most of us that speak it rarely stop to think where and how its rich texture and depth came about as well as the many oddities and inconsistencies that are embedded in English. Bill Bryson does a fabulous and amusing job of tracing the history and shedding light on the reasons why. He does as always makes light work of a potentially heavy subject. A must read for any lover of the Bard's language

Browsing for Word Lovers.......2007-04-22

Bill Bryson's THE MOTHER TONGUE is not the type of book you pick up and read from cover to cover. Instead, it's a great "dipping" book. You dip in and learn a little bit about the English language's history, quirks about many words, their spellings, their etymologies, and so forth. For added flavor, there's the occasional Bill Bryson joke (he's a clever lad, and it's a good thing, given the book's scholarly bent).

Prepare to like some chapters better than others. "The First Thousand Years" was a bit of a drag for me (going way back, you see) and "Wordplay" was more fun; there's the anecdote, for instance, about a British crossword puzzle maker who came up with the clue "an important city in Czechoslovakia" which has an answer of "Oslo." If you're thinking Norway, look carefully at the sixth through ninth letters of that former Eastern European country's name. Also entertaining are the plentiful details of battles between the English and the Americans (and no, I don't mean Bunker Hill -- I mean colour vs. color and Samuel Johnson vs. Noah Webster, etc.).

It appears that the linguists have poked some holes in Bryson's scholarly research here as well (see spotlight review, for instance). That lowers the rating, too, because, as a layman reader, you have no clue WHAT is accurate and what is not. Not good. Still, much of it is valid, certainly, as I verified many facts in other sources, and some of it is entertaining as well. The bottom line? Worth a look if you're a word fan like me. If not, you probably won't even enjoy it as a "browser" (I'll have to ask Bill if that's a word or not).

Lots of fluff, not much substance.......2007-01-20

Bryson can be a witty writer . . . sometimes. But he's a journalist, not a linguist -- and certainly not a "language scholar" as some of the reviews claim. In fact, this book reads like a longer version of the sort of term paper a college freshman might put together all from secondary sources and with no sense of critical construction and no insight whatever. First, he spends several chapters explaining how language in general works, how it originated, what "Indo-European" means, and so on; he doesn't get down to discussing English in any detail until Chapter 7. He repeats folktales like the Eskimos having thirty words for snow, . . . which was shown several decades ago to have been made up by some other journalist in need of a pithy factoid. As a longtime genealogist, I turned to the chapter on names with interest, but found nothing at all new. In fact, Bryson seems to spend most of his time listing interesting examples instead of extending his discussion of the principles they are intended to illuminate. There are a fair number of readable anecdotes here, but not much else.

Entertaining, even if flawed.......2006-12-31

I got this book after having read a few of Bryson's other works. His style is that of a sarcastic crumedgeon, but it can be really entertaining-- if you're on his side.

Some of the review are pretty harsh. Overly so, if you ask me. Take this book for what it is. If you want a scholarly, well-researched, impeccable presentation of the development of the English language, this isn't the place to find it. But if you're just looking for a light introduction to linguistics, this is a fine book, especially if you wouldn't mind reading a few funny jabs made at the expense of languages and their speakers.

Maybe there are errors in this book. That's fine with me. I'm not a linguist (and neither is Bryson), and I have no intention of ever becoming one, so I don't see much harm in a couple of mistakes. But if I were an expert in this field, I'm sure they would irk me, to say the least.

The bottom line is that this is, first and foremost, an entertaining book, rather than scholarly. And on that note, I thought it was a big success.

Our Mother Tongue: An Introductory Guide to English Grammar

Average customer rating:

Not What I Expected but still a Good Reference Book

Our Mother Tongue: An Introductory Guide to English Grammar
Nancy Wilson
Manufacturer: Canon Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1591280117

Product Description

The importance of the spoken and written word in Christian culture cannot be overestimated. In this English grammar guide, Nancy Wilson surveys the major concepts in English grammar for beginners at the late elementary and junior high level (even adults seeking a brush-up). Wilson avoids common, contrived sentences that serve merely to illustrate her point; instead, she uses many selections from Scripture and from great English writers which help to instruct the student through their content, style, and structure. In addition to a helpful format that highlights key definitions, punctuation issues, and important concepts, short historical sidebars tell the facinating story of the development of English. She continues the traditional and challenging exercise of sentence diagramming, which trains students to quickly ananlyze the structure of any given sentence. The grammatical explanations, the logic of diagrams, and the rhetoric of her examples blend with complementary emphases to create a helpful classical and Christian text.

Customer Reviews:

Not What I Expected but still a Good Reference Book.......2006-09-15

This book is very similiar in nature to First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind but adds a religious twist. It starts by devoting a section to learning the 8 parts of speech and goes on in later pages to tell about clauses, phrases and concludes with a glossary. I like the word origin part that tells how the English language came to be.

There are a few assignments for each section which is why I give it 4 stars. I would say that this is more a reference with a few assignments thrown in for practice.

If you are looking for a complete solution for a school year, look further like maybe Complete Book of Grammar & Punctuation from the complete book series.

If you are on the other hand looking for reference material to teach lanaguage arts then this is an excellent choice.

The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue

Average customer rating:

A little shallow
Controversial Thesis: All Languages Come from One Source
OK, now comes the hard part.
Proto-Homo Sapiens
Interesting discussion of the evolution of language

The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue
Merritt Ruhlen
Manufacturer: John Wiley & Sons Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0471584266

Amazon.com

As a sophomore in college, I desperately wanted to major in theoretical linguistics, but I knew only three languages, and I was advised that this was insufficient for the major. Things might have been different if this book were available then: unlike most books about language evolution, Ruhlen's Origin of Language actually gets you involved in applying standard linguistic techniques to carefully chosen examples--by the end of the book, you will have constructed a family tree of the world's languages. And you needn't know any other than your mother tongue when you start, but you'll probably want to go out and learn several more languages by time you are done. Recommended.

Book Description

"Ruhlen is a leader in the new attempt to unify the theory of language development and diffusion."––Library Journal

"A powerful statement...also a wonderfully clear exposition of linguistic thinking about prehistory."––Anthropological Science

One of the world's foremost language researchers takes readers step-by-step through the hotly contested evidence that all modern languages derive from one "mother tongue" once spoken by primitive humans in Africa. With The Origin of Language, Merritt Ruhlen makes this fascinating science accessible to readers with no linguistic background.

MERRITT RUHLEN, PhD (Palo Alto, California) is the author of A Guide to the World's Languages

Customer Reviews:

A little shallow.......2006-07-03

I hoped a more scientific book, it starts with too many assumptions, but I have like and I think is worth reading it, at least reading it, since it's not a book to consult frquently.

Controversial Thesis: All Languages Come from One Source.......2006-02-05

This is Ruhlen's point. Based on modern similarities, all languages are related, some more distantly than others. At the end there is a "tree" showing the purported relationships between our language families. Ruhlen offers his case; he does not prove it. And with the exception of a handful of words, he does not attempt to recognize *Proto-World. He argues that reconstruction is unnecessary.

This book is for the lay reader. It offers a small group of words from a group of languages, and asks the reader to compare them. In each case the careful reader will find the intended relationships. Thus "The Origin of Language" guides the cooperative reader to accept the existence of language families, and then, and here's the controversial part, to accept the existence of links between families.

At first I found this infuriating. I was not a cooperative reader. After all, I have always known that there are several major language families and several isolates, each separate from the others. Ruhlen hand-picked words that would make his point. But as I read on, I accepted first that he was making a case that I disagreed with and that was likely wrong. And by the end, my previous thinking had been shaken.

"New Synthesis"

"The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue" falls into a category of scholarship that seems to go by the name "new synthesis." Mutually supporting bits of linguistic, archaeological, genetic, and social evidence are woven together to tell the story of humans leaving Africa and spreading, first along the shores of the Indian Ocean and on to New Guinea and Australia, later to the interior and western parts of Eurasia (and even later to the Americas). Authors including Renfrew and Cavelli-Sforza have written, in their own fields, books which fit into this new synthesis. A nice introduction would be Steve Olsen's "Mapping Human History."

Worth a Look

You may not agree with Merritt Ruhlen's thesis. But if you curious about the origins of language, you should take a look at this short volume. Reject it if you will, but at least you will know what the "lumpers," the single origin people are claiming.

OK, now comes the hard part. .......2005-09-24

This book, written for lay readers, ventures two arguments. One, which seems plausible enough, is that existing linguistic families correspond to genetic markers in the peoples who originally spoke them, and are related in a similar tree that relates human populations. The other, far more controversial, is that just as *Homo sapiens sapiens* is the offspring of a single stock and a common group of ancestors, so also are all human languages related; and in fact some root words of Proto-Human can be reconstructed by the comparative method.

Amateur philologists like myself will naturally jump at such a tantalizing suggestion; and perhaps one test of how good an amateur you are is to see how many problems you can find with his development of the themes.

His basic method, like Joseph Greenberg's, is bulk comparison of vocabulary. Few attempts to reconstruct underlying forms are made here, with some conspicuous exceptions. His method is to present words in lists, and invite readers to perceive similarities themselves; an interesting rhetorical ploy that makes the reader the accomplice in setting up the main thesis. In these lists, reconstructed forms from protolanguages appear unmarked next to vocabulary items taken from wide ranges of existing lnaguages; there's no reassurance that any of the words in one of his rows are from the same language, or are actually attested forms. The same is true of the long lists of words cited in text: protolanguages appear besides dozens of obscure languages. Nouns, verbs, and grammatical particles or inflections appear alongside one another in the same list.

The rest of the book is taken towards presenting an argument that explains why reconstructions or analyses of the history of his roots will not be forthcoming. Ruhlen argues that no such analysis was necessary to identify Indo-European, which was discovered on the strength of word lists alone. One flaw in this argument is that scientific hypotheses are not thumbs-up or thumbs-down propositions; rather, they gain or lose confidence depending on the depth, power, and detail of their explanatory power. It isn't that these word lists aren't enough to get to "maybe," it's that they aren't enough to go further than that.

In any case, phonological and historical rules *do* appear in the text. Ruhlen notes correctly that often a /k/ sound is voiced to /g/, or that /t/ sounds can be palatized to /c/ or /s/ sounds. These phonological rules let Ruhlen cast a wider net, allowing more and more words from different languages to be mustered as evidence. They *never* appear as historical grounds to reject a purported cognate, on the ground that the inherited form in this particular branch must have changed in an intermediate stage prior to the observed form in one language.

The bottom line is that Ruhlen's hypothesis stalls at the "maybe" stage. Someone is going to have to do the harder work of actual historical linguistics here if this hypothesis is going to be able to move past that stage.

Proto-Homo Sapiens .......2005-09-04

The major point of this book is that when modern humans migrated out of Africa that very first time, they brought a language with them from which all other subsequent languages have evolved. Modern human beings are programmed for language. It is what instigated the development of much more complex cultures and gave Homo Sapiens the edge over earlier forms. As Ruhlen points out, developing a language is largely the arbitrary ordering and naming of countless things. It would have taken much effort and time in that earliest small human community. It probably also enabled humans to spread so rapidly over the globe. It was the first information revolution. I find it easier to believe that once developed, a workable language would evolve rather than be discarded. The argument that too much time has passed for us to reconstruct that language is only partially convincing. Ruhlen shows that it is possible to uncover some clues to its content by working backward, just as we have to reconstruct the Proto-language families.

I have become interested in the Indo-Europeans and have followed their trail through several books including Mallory's In Search of the Indo-Europeans. I had become convinced that their homeland was the steppes north of the Black Sea. Ruhlen has convinced me that it must have been Anatolia, the area south of the Black Sea (modern Turkey). Although Proto-Indo European has words that tie it to the pastoral horse culture of the north, it is the spread of farming that probably spread the language. However, if you accept Ruhlen's earlier time frame, the Red Sea would have been a fresh water lake. (See Noah's Flood by Ryan and Pitman.) That environment would have been much more hospitable to interactions among the people who lived on its shores. Pastoralists would regularly have traded with those early farmers. Perhaps together, they engendered the early language that has so prospered since.

Interesting discussion of the evolution of language.......2005-07-20

Interesting discussion of the evolution of language. Ruhlen does an good job in tying in his field of endeavor with DNA testing and archeology. He makes his work understandable to the non expert.

It is helpful to use the maps below provided by the author, which provide large color maps of language location.

(...)

He spends a little too much time protesting how other people don't agree with him. He would have been better to simply address this issue once.

I do think it likely that all language evolved from one source many years ago. But so much time has passed that is very difficult to establish the correct path of evolution. But paired with DNA testing a believable map of the expansion of both people and language is developed.

The Genius of Language: Fifteen Writers Reflect on Their Mother Tongue

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Wonderful Reading!
This anthology is as unique as it is interesting to read.

The Genius of Language: Fifteen Writers Reflect on Their Mother Tongue
Wendy Lesser
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1400033233
Release Date: 2005-07-12

Book Description

Fifteen outstanding writers answered editor Wendy Lesser’s call for original essays on the subject of language–the one they grew up with, and the English in which they write.

Despite American assumptions about polite Chinese discourse, Amy Tan believes that there was nothing discreet about the Chinese language with which she grew up. Leonard Michaels spoke only Yiddish until he was five, and still found its traces in his English language writing. Belgian-born Luc Sante loved his French Tintin and his Sartre, but only in English could he find “words of one syllable” that evoke American bars and bus stops. And although Louis Begley writes novels in English and addresses family members in Polish, he still speaks French with his wife–the language of their courtship.

As intimate as one’s dreams, as private as a secret identity, these essays examine and reveal the writers’ pride, pain, and pleasure in learning a new tongue, revisiting an old one, and reconciling the joys and frustrations of each.

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful Reading!.......2005-11-06

Wonderful collection of essays by first-rank writers on the transition from the native language to our American version of English. Starting of course with the example of Joseph Conrad they offer insights into their intial contact with English in their childhoods and how this shaped their perceptions of the US and ease their entry into our society. Since I have first hand experience with most of the languages and cultures described (living in Bangladesh, Poland, and Russia, Scottish grandmother), this rang true. Useful for linguists to see how their theories work, something I don't quite understand, but which they do as perceptive writers. The brief essays are well-crafted and easy to understand, much more accessible than their own writings may be or a sociological analysis of the transitions they outline.

This anthology is as unique as it is interesting to read. .......2005-10-15

All fifteen authors have one thing in common: they love words. All of them were drop-shipped, via their parent's fiat, to worlds where their mother tongue was no longer heard. These are the stories of how they lived, learned, spoke and eventual wrote English. Initially, their minds were full of ideas, but the words to express them were no longer understood outside of their family. The need to communicate burned inside of them and drove them to English, and maybe drove to the unencumbered freedom found in writing.

If you are looking for a work in the field of linguistics, keep looking, for this book is a `niche' book that gives one an unusual vista on the joys of words via quasi-autobiographies. This anthology is as unique as it is interesting to read. Strongly recommended

Average customer rating:

More Fun Than a Barrel of Monkeys with Typewriters

The Mother Tongue
Lancelot Hogben
Manufacturer: Norton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: B0007DKSKC

Customer Reviews:

More Fun Than a Barrel of Monkeys with Typewriters.......2006-11-29

I've read, studied, and re-read this book for forty-two years, and it's an endless source of joy. But the title should have been The Mother TongueS. Hogben argues that since our English vocabulary is a composite of dozens of other languages, one can more easily learn Latin, French, Greek, and so on by determining the meaning and origin of words from those languages. While this method doesn't aid in learning other grammatical structures, or not greatly, it does build vocabulary--and it's enormous fun to learn where a word like "telephone" comes from! (No, I won't tell you. You should have the fun of looking it up in this book.)

The author's little end-of-chapter quizzes are equally amusing and informative. Write your answers lightly in pencil, and you can keep erasing them and re-taking the quizzes. There's also a delightful table of Indo-European cognates, and seeing them laid out in Hogben's chart one wonders why the deep-time connections, although vaguely guessed as early as Roman times, were not systematized until the 18th and 19th centuries.

I majored in Linguistics as an undergrad, although this amusing book was written afterward. Most of us who love messing around with language grabbed a copy of The Mother Tongue when it first came out in 1964, and I'd bet that quite a few youngsters in generations younger than mine became entranced by linguistics and etymology thanks to this wonderful book! My only real quibble with it is that it lacks an index, but it would make a great Christmas present for a bright teen-ager.

The Genius of Language: Fifteen Writers Reflect on Their Mother Tongues

Average customer rating:

"A blossom of hands"
A survey of how writers alienated from their mother tongue
Comments Worth Reading
Satisfyingly dives into the many realms of language

The Genius of Language: Fifteen Writers Reflect on Their Mother Tongues

Manufacturer: Pantheon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Release Date: 2004-07-27

Customer Reviews:

"A blossom of hands".......2005-03-07

This book of short essays assembled by Wendy Lesser is well worth the time and attention of anyone who enjoys language and the craft of writing. It provides the insights of serious authors as each adapted to the English language after being first subject to another tongue. As a bonus, the book is worthwhile in that it gives the reader a quick appreciation of the varied writing styles of fifteen talented authors, in case the reader would like to track down and explore any of their other independent works.

A survey of how writers alienated from their mother tongue .......2004-11-12

Wendy Lesser asked fifteen modern writers to reflect on their formative experiences with language and culture, and her Genius Of Language is the result: a survey of how writers alienated from their mother tongue embraced English and faced exile from both their culture and their own language. Essays by Amy Tan, Louis Begley and others provide important keys to understanding the process of adapting to another language and all its cultural implications.

Comments Worth Reading.......2004-10-31

As someone with no ear at all for foreign languages, I find it amazing that these people become writers and then choose to write in what to them is a foreign language. Even more, they write it so much better than the rest of us.

They also reflect on how their bi-lingualism makes their English better. It seems that the effort of learning the second language gives them somewhat of a drive to find ways to express themselves in English what might be an easy thing to express in their own tongue. As a result, they learn ways to use English that stretch the language to its limit.

To have gotten fifteen writers of the caliber contributing essays to this book has to be considered a major coup on Wendy Lesser's part. This book provides an insight to language that is astounding.

Satisfyingly dives into the many realms of language.......2004-08-31

If you are at all interested in language, language-acquisition, and how language (multi-linguilism) and life/identity intertwine, you'll love curling up with this book. There are 15 essays, arranged by the non-English (mother-tongue) language of the writer. Each of the six writers I have read thus far have approached the subject in wholly different (and mostly fascinating) lights. Tan is mercilessly sharp and funny while asking how seriously we should take the "language-shapes-reality" theory and while illustrating the fallacies of Chinese language/culture stereotpyes. Ariel Dorfman brilliantly uses an unconventional essay structure to probe and deconstruct his conflicted journey through his bilinguilism (Spanish/English)with extraordinary intelligence and linguistic/psychological force and sensitivity. With such a variety of languages, writers, styles/experiences, what's not to love?

Average customer rating:

So many factual errors and urban myths, more harm than good
Bill is having fun with the tongue

Mother Tongue
Bill Bryson
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 014014305X

Customer Reviews:

So many factual errors and urban myths, more harm than good.......2007-06-26

Bill Bryson's book MOTHER TONGUE has an admirable goal, to present the evolution and current state of the English language in a simple and intriguing fashion. However, it is a book full of factual errors. On nearly every page this is an urban myth, folk etymology, or misunderstanding of linguistics.

Bryson writes charming travelogues - THE LOST CONTINENT is a book I'd recommend to any foreigner wanting to learn about rural America - but he is an amateur with an interest in wordplay and not a professional linguist. Much of the book appears to have been thrown together from older books on language for the popular reader, especially those of Otto Jespersen, Mario Pei, and Montagu, which themselves have been criticised for errors and oversimplications.

The errors of the book astound from the start any reader with the slighest knowledge of language. Bryson speaks of the Eskimos having a multitude of words for snow, though this urban myth causes linguists to shudder and has been soundly debunked in THE GREAT ESKIMO VOCABULARY HOAX. Bryson goes on to say that Russian has no words for "efficiency", "engagement ring", or "have fun", a preposterous statement that can be proved wrong by any Russian speaker. His knowledge of British history is also shaky, as he asserts that the Saxon invaders eliminated entirely the former Celtic inhabitants, but in reality they merely imposed their language and Britons now remain essentially the same people genetically as 4,000 years ago.

Every reader who speaks another language besides English will find a most annoying mistake in THE MOTHER TONGUE. For me, once a speaker of Esperanto, it was Bryson's ridiculous summary of the language. He begans by mispelling the name of the language's initiator. Then he asserts that the language has no definite articles - it does - but then gives a sample of the language in which this definite article he just denied is used twiced (and mispelled once).

These are only a few examples, the book is filled with multitudes more.

While the birth and growth of the English language is a fascinating subject, it's a shame that it is spoiled in MOTHER TONGUE by an abundance of errors. If you are interested about how English got the way it is today, I'd recommend trying another book, one preferably written by someone with a degree in linguistics.

Bill is having fun with the tongue.......2007-04-29

This book contains more than you expect. Bill Bryson covers language its self with a focus on English. The book covers speech from a historical view, a physical view, an environmental view, a utilitarian view, and many other views. If you find the tape version, you will want to play the tape over again as it cruses through many concepts that leave you thinking and speculating how it could have all gone differently.
A highlight for me (aside from his dirty word list) was the recognition that we try to impose Old Latin syntaxes on Modern English and it can get redicules.
My only disappointment comes when he mentions things I have already read and gets it wrong or off the mark. You have to worry a little about what you do not know and if to trust him. Still it is a fun book.
The advantage of the tape is that you actually hear the pronunciations. When it is a matter of spelling the reader will spell it out for you. Also the reader has the ability to change accents to fit the dialect samples.
The disadvantage is when you want to turn back to a particular page for cross-reference; there is no page to turn. So I would be smart to own both versions.

Global Mother Tongue: The Eight Flavours of English

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Global Mother Tongue: The Eight Flavours of English
Howard Richler
Manufacturer: Vehicule Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 155065215X

Book Description

Celebrating a language that is spoken by 1.6 billion people, this entertaining analysis explores the international growth of English and gives an in-depth examination of its history. Explaining the differences and similarities between the eight English-languages—African, American, Australian/New Zealand, British, Canadian, Caribbean, East Asian, and South Asian—this survey reflects on both dialect and usage. With humor and fascinating facts, the book illustrates the changes implemented by English and evaluates the impact of other languages on English, asserting that it is truly the first global tongue.

The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way

Average customer rating:

So many factual errors and urban myths, more harm than good

The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way
Bill Bryson
Manufacturer: William Morrow and Company, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000BF6U08

Product Description

An engaging jaunt through the quirks and byways of the world's most important--and most baffling--language, one that has achieved eminence, overcome odds, inspired majesty of thought, but is nonetheless utterly confusing!

Customer Reviews:

So many factual errors and urban myths, more harm than good.......2007-06-26

Bill Bryson's book MOTHER TONGUE has an admirable goal, to present the evolution and current state of the English language in a simple and intriguing fashion. However, it is a book full of factual errors. On nearly every page this is an urban myth, folk etymology, or misunderstanding of linguistics.

Bryson writes charming travelogues - THE LOST CONTINENT is a book I'd recommend to any foreigner wanting to learn about rural America - but he is an amateur with an interest in wordplay and not a professional linguist. Much of the book appears to have been thrown together from older books on language for the popular reader, especially those of Otto Jespersen, Mario Pei, and Montagu, which themselves have been criticized for errors and oversimplications.

The errors of the book astound from the start any reader with the slightest knowledge of language. Bryson speaks of the Eskimos having a multitude of words for snow, though this urban myth causes linguists to shudder and has been soundly debunked in THE GREAT ESKIMO VOCABULARY HOAX. Bryson goes on to say that Russian has no words for "efficiency", "engagement ring", or "have fun", a preposterous statement that can be proved wrong by any Russian speaker. His knowledge of British history is also shaky, as he asserts that the Saxon invaders eliminated entirely the former Celtic inhabitants, but in reality they merely imposed their language and Britons now remain essentially the same people genetically as 4,000 years ago.

Every reader who speaks another language besides English will find a most annoying mistake in THE MOTHER TONGUE. For me, once a speaker of Esperanto, it was Bryson's ridiculous summary of the language. He begins by misspelling the name of the language's initiator. Then he asserts that the language has no definite articles - it does - but then gives a sample of the language in which this definite article he just denied is used twice (and misspelled once).

These are only a few examples, the book is filled with multitudes more.

While the birth and growth of the English language is a fascinating subject, it's a shame that it is spoiled in MOTHER TONGUE by an abundance of errors. If you are interested about how English got the way it is today, I'd recommend trying another book, one preferably written by someone with a degree in linguistics.

A Linguistic Study of Errors in Written English of Students with Kannada Mother Tongue (Central Institute of Indian Languages silver jubilee publication series)

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A Linguistic Study of Errors in Written English of Students with Kannada Mother Tongue (Central Institute of Indian Languages silver jubilee publication series)
R. Nawjaiah
Manufacturer: Central Institute of Indian Language,India
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 8173420025

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