Rating: 
Summary: word wonders!
Review: this book is enough to turn a curious mind into a linguistic obsessive. i found myself profoundly contemplating many of the ideas and phenomena related to language which made this a rather slow read. although i'm only up to chapter six or so here are some of the more interesting bites:= 10% of shakespeare's writing were original words - i.e. every tenth word he used was an original creation! revelatory = pekinese only uses monosyllabic words with up to 200 or so meanings for the expression "yi" alone... = 300 words in the english dictionary were created by typos = letters creep in to words over time such as the "n" in stand (notice how the past-tense stood has no "n") = conjugations of expressions such as "mine ellen, mine edward and mine ann" gave us the names nell, ned and nan.... it really is a collection of anecdotes that i wholeheartedly recommend to anyone.... page-turner! i will probably be looking through more of bryson's books after this...
Rating: 
Summary: Bryson, you're an ass.
Review: I am an undergraduate student in linguistics, and as a gramarian, as well as someone who has a genuine interest in languages, of any sort, I must say that this book represents the lowest and least informed type of linguistic literature to date. Bryson has no concept of science, meticulous research, or humility. Besides his overly glaring inaccuracies about the languages of some Alaskan peoples (they aren't called Eskimos anymore, Bill), there are numerous other, smaller slipups which harm the book's credibility as a well-researched treatice greatly. Most notable among them, for me, was when Bryson glibly stated that the language, Irish Gaelic, has no words for "yes" or "no", so its speakers must resort to expressions such as "I think not". On the contrary, the words, "ta/" and "ni/l" are as often used as not for these expressions. And was I the only one who noticed that in deliniating the list of words Shakespeare gave us, Bryson used obseen twice? Also, much of this information is not only inaccurate, but hopelessly dated (Australians hardly use expressions such as "cobber" anymore). In short, I was so disgusted with the book that I only read about half of it before becoming thoroughly unable to continue. This is rubbish; read something by Stephen Pinker if you want something not only based in scientifically proven fact, but presented by a professor with degrees in the subject.
Rating: 
Summary: What hapened to Bill?
Review: I, like others, have thoroughly enjoyed many of Bryson's other works. A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING seemed penned by a different mind. The book covers an important topic - English and its history and future. Yet, despite the attempts at humor throughout the book, it reads more like a middle school book report. What galls me is when folks allegedly attempting to educated the general public make factual errors that should have been caught in the research stage. The Eskimo snow myth could qualify for an Urban Legend, some of the derivatives are WAY off, the FBI has said it CANNOT tell where people are just by the way they speak, and worst - he says Esperanto has no definite articles and then uses one! Go figure. He is at his best in the historical analysis but it is too abbreviated. Also well done are his (very) brief looks at the abysmal failure of "created" languages. These will never prosper since they do not have a support base. English, he demonstrates, is the most varied, the richest, the most adaptable and the most widely spread language in the world. It is the new lingua franca.
Rating: 
Summary: keep a pinch of salt handy
Review: Sadly I must concur with many fellow-reviewers: the numerous important errors that plague an otherwise worthwhile and entertaining book mean you can never be sure when to trust the author's assertions. Bryson's undoubted communicative flair has clearly enthused many lay-readers about language, and that is a heartening sign. His vigorous debunking of bogus so-called language pundits (Safire, Simon, et al.) is also to be welcomed (see Steven Pinker's 'Language Instinct' for an equally enjoyable slaying of the 'language mavens').
All this makes the book's flaws all the more exasperating and disappointing. They range from the trivial to the quite breath-taking - I won't list them all here, as other reviewers have already highlighted many of them (eg. The French can't distinguish between 'mind' and 'brain'... hmm, I hope he's used some of the proceeds from this book to invest in a French dictionary - and an Italian one, and Finnish...)
What I will point out are the gaps in his grammatical understanding: I'm not talking about arcane, abstruse, pedantic points here, but the fundamentals of grammar, what it is, and how we use and describe it. Almost half an entire chapter (where he discusses the categorisation of words into various parts of speech, and verbs into tenses) can and should be junked. He seems to think the terms and concepts we use to categorise English grammar are absurd, constrictive and inappropriate, merely because they are greco-latin in origin. For example, he doesn't see the need for the dual categorisation of -ing words as both 'gerunds' and 'present participles'; but this redounds to his discredit, no-one else's. These terms merely describe a distinction that we all observe whether we're conscious of it or not. When we hear 'My favourite hobby is swimming' we automatically understand that this does not mean 'my favourite hobby is currently doing a length of the pool'. Likewise, we know that 'I am swimming' doesn't mean 'I am the very act of propelling oneself through a body of water'.
The terms we use to describe grammar are precisely that - descriptive, not prescriptive, and have stood the test of time because they are versatile, adaptable, enable clear, precise thought and explanation when analysing linguistic constructions, and facilitate comparative study of different language structures.
But Bryson's heart is in the right place, and if people who read this book are inspired to widen their language/linguistics-related reading, that can only be a good thing.
Allow me to recommend a couple of other books as essential further reading:
'The Language Instinct' Steven Pinker
'The Power of Babel' John McWhorter
Engaging, not to say captivating, works - ideal for the layperson but packed with real linguistic meat and serious scholarly endeavour nonetheless.
Rating:
Summary: Amusing but Concerningly Ill-researched
Review: I'm having a conflicting situation here. I am fluttering through this book happily, with nary a dull moment. At the same time, my barely-beyond-layman's education in linguistics (three or four college courses) is consistently being offended. As several reviewers pointed out, this book is riddled with erroneous information, obvious enough to gall even the non-expert. His assertion, for example, that English uses fewer articles (definite and indefinite) than essentially every other language, especially gendered languages, ignores obvious contradictions, like Russian (which has feminine, masculine and neuter nouns and no articles at all for the most part). The argument that English's one-size-fits-all approach to the second-person pronoun ("you", vs. French "tu" and "vous") is something that makes the language somehow superior also grates--I, for one, find it irritating that we have no plural form, and people in the American South have, adaptively, coined "y'all" to fill the gap. As a final example here (but far, far from the last of the bungles I read) is the implication that the English plural form is somehow an orthographical issue, and that it can be explained as simply "-s" or "-es" after "-sh" words. The true origin of plurals actually involves morphosyntax. I won't waste time explaining that here (it's fairly dry, anyway). All that aside, however, I'm still having fun. I learned some new words (velleity, glabrous, ugsome); I committed to memory a few new anecdotes. So, have fun with this book, but don't take it too seriously. If you're like me, you may be inspired to go seek out more academic books on the subject.
Rating:
Summary: Wow! Entertaining and Educational
Review: I loved this book so much I read it twice and I will probably read it again soon. Who knew there was so much to learn about the origins of the English language. I loved it! It made me want to major in English and study linguistics and language history (although I didn't end up doing that, I still have a strong passion for the subject).
Rating: 
Summary: reviewing the reviewed
Review: Gotta love the reviewer (who paints himself a language aficionado while writing in English in non-English speaking countries) who said about this book, "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)." "Begans," "Mispelling" and "mispelled." That's funny. Despite this book's obvious mistakes (wow, I almost spelled that with two s's before the "t") there are genuine insights and amusing forays into the nature of language. Reviewer - Were you trying to be funny and some of us just missed it? Now you know how the author of this hyper-reviewed book must feel!
Rating:
Summary: Nice light and informative read
Review: Can anyone right a book like Bryson? He makes etymology fun in this hilarious and interesting book. Have you ever why a certain word means a certain thing. Where did these words come from? This book will answer these questions and make you laugh out loud.
Rating:
Summary: Bill is having fun with the tongue.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: So many factual errors and urban myths, more harm than good
Review: 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, 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.
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