Mother Tongue: The Story of the English Language

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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. With his boundless enthusiasm and restless eye for the absurd, this is his astonishing tour of English.

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. Lack of structure aside, I really enjoyed reading this and will be reading more books by Bryson in the future.My one complaint is that, despite being loosely hung on British and American history, for the most part the book lacks a greater structure and ends up reading like a series of interesting facts.

To Bryson, Welsh is "as unpronounceable as it looks", and Welsh pronunciations "rarely bear much relation to their spellings. Of course, Bill Bryson couldn't have foreseen how the Internet would change English (it would be interesting to know). Some people giving favourable reviews said that they weren't put off by it—it had been an entertaining read anyway. It is accepted by you that Daunt Books has no control over additional charges in relation to customs clearance. All of this makes me question all the other "facts" I don't know anything about, I simply don't know if I've learned more about them from reading this book.Some of the stories are interesting, and even reasonably factual, but at other times the failed fact-checking is glaringly obvious--and come on, the perpetuation of the "Eskimo Snow Myth"? What a hilarious, fascinating, and educational look at our wacky, wonderful, and WAY complicated language. No place in the English-speaking world is more breathtakingly replete with dialects than Great Britain.

Some of it just sounded wrong, like the quote from an article that says most speakers of other languages aren’t aware there is such a thing as a thesaurus. Registered office address: Unit 34 Vulcan House Business Centre, Vulcan Road, Leicester, Leicestershire, LE5 3EF. Our team is made up of book lovers who are dedicated to sourcing and providing the best books for kids.It’s a fascinating and, as is usually the case with Bryson, entertaining account of evolution of the English language. He recounts the triumph of Anglo-Saxon language over Celtic (even though many of England's place names preserve their Celtic roots), the impact of the Norman invasion (of 10,000 words, approximately 3/4ths are still in use including much of the language of nobility (duke, baron prince) and much language of jurisprudence (justice, jury, prison among others). 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. In fact, it would appear that one of the beauties of the English language is that even with the most tenuous grasp you can speak volumes if you show enough enthusiasm — a willingness to tootle with vigor, as it were.