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Summary: kept a class of 8th graders spellbound
Review: I don't care about the errors. When I was asked to read to a class of 8th graders, I chose excerpts from this book. The whole class was spellbound, sometimes laughing, sometimes pondering and always interested. The teacher says she wants her own copy, and the class is asking for me to come back and read more. What could be a higher recommendation?
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Summary: Fun reading, appalling research
Review: Bryson is terrific at describing the English language and its history. One would never guess that subjects as seemingly dry as linguistics and (eech) grammar could be given such a page-turning treatment. In this sense, Mother Tongue is a terrific piece of writing.Where Bryson tends to fall flat on his face is when he compares English to other languages: he tends to make sweeping statements about languages he obviously does not speak, and invariably comes to the conclusion that English is the greatest language ever. These sweeping statements tend to go a bit like this: Bryson wants to say something in Spanish/Urdu/Whatever. He doesn't know the word or can't find it in the outdated dictionaries he obviously uses. Ergo, English is the best language on the planet because he can say things in English that he can't say in other languages. This is a bit of a worry: if his research is so shaky in one topic (comparative linguistics), how can one vouch for the REST of the book? Well, never mind... if you can read Mother Tongue without worrying too much about its accuracy, and gloss over its obvious jingoism, it's a pretty good book.
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Summary: A Veritable English-o-rama!
Review: 'The Mother Tongue' is very engaging and humorous book about the origins, history and eccentricities of the English language. Bryson has done a masterful job of wading through a lot of linguistic scholarship and synthesizing it into a very informative and funny book for the English enthusiast. Many of the reviewers below seem to have gone out of their way to point out every little error contained in this book, and there certainly are a few. However, if you put all the factual mistakes in perspective by looking at them in relation to the wealth of information contained in this book (often up to a dozen facts and anecdotes on each page), you'll see that the errors make up an incredibly small percentage and don't in any way detract form the overall impact or enjoyment of this book (it would, however, in the future be nice to see a revised editions with some of the most egregious errors removed). Unlike certain self-righteous, dead languages (that I won't mention by name...but Pierre knows what I'm talking about!) that insist on goose-stepping around in their arcane linguistic jackboots- English is alive and kicking. This book celebrates the mother tongue as the bizarre mish-mash of styles and influences that it is. You can't read it without appreciating it as a breathing language that is constantly in flux, always reflecting the cultural diversity of its many native and non-native speakers. I've recommended this book to oddles and oddles of folks, some of whom were not particularly interested in language, and they all ended up loving it.
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Summary: A thoroughly Splendid Read
Review: I found the Mother Tongue ... to be one of the more interesting of books that attempt to broach the subject of the history of the English Language. This book is so captivating it reads like a fascinating novel instead of a historical review of a language and its orgins. I swept through the book in a fit of giggles and usually ended most chapters agreeing with the author on one or more of his anecdotal points. I am from England and have lived in the States for a while now. I have seen the many differences between 'English' and 'American English' and have been "lucky" enough to experience the many possible double entendres and faux pas' when trying to speak my native English in America. This book highlights some of these differences in a well balanced, humourous way. Read it and enjoy it.
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Summary: Wow! For all with a sense of humor and a love of languages
Review: 'The Mother Tongue' captivated me from the first two sentences, "More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to. It would be charitable to say that the results are sometimes mixed." Covering one of my favorite subjects, the English language, Bryson's chapters include: Global Language, Where Words Come From, Pronunciation, Spelling, Good and Bad English, Names, Swearing, Wordplay, and the Future of English. He is not an "English Teacher" and he does not favor the snotty, dry William-Safire-ish "you-should-be-ashamed-for-having-split-an-infinitive" type of English language fans. He is rather more like a bemused bystander and observer of how English is used, misused, where funny and odd things in our language come from, why we do or did (or don't or didn't) carry on British spellings and pronunciations. In total, in typical Bryson fashion, he has taken a subject that the majority of Average Joes would find screamingly boring and made it fascinating... and for someone like me who loves the language to begin with - well, it's just a good, good time.
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Summary: A terrific non-fiction book for all to read.
Review: This book is fantastic! I loved how it brings the subject of linguistics down-to-earth so anyone could pick "Mother Tongue" up and read it with joy. It brings to light some interesting subjects as where those rules for English grammar came from, how the language itself developed, and how it has evolved over the centuries. It shows how English itself is actually a rather efficient language when compared to many others and how it is also one of the most versitile languages out there today. Great stuff!!!
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Summary: My all-time favorite non-fiction book
Review: I've re-read this book many times, and each time, it makes me smile. It's a book that is delightful to read! I'm an ex-British American, so the chapters on word derivation and differences between the variants of English are particularly interesting to me. I find Bill Bryson's humor in some of his travel books less appealing. It can get a little repetitive. But not in this book!
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Summary: Wordplay.....
Review: Having spent most of my life traveling hither and thither, I learned that even inside the U.S. you often need a translator--even if you're both speaking English. My yankee cousins drank pop or soda, but in the South, we drank coke. Bryson says the most common vowel sound in English is the "schwa" sound shown in dictionaries as the inverted e -- the 'i' in animal; the 'e' in enough' etc. But how can this be when 'enough' is pronounced "n'uff" and "E'nuff" as well as "eh'nuff" -- (just a few of the accentuations in Virginia). Early on I developed a sensitivity to my spoken accent because Yankees and other Americans have always looked down on southern speech. Then, I read that the English spoken in the South was almost identical to the English spoken in 16th Century England -- because the U.S. South was a backwater for hundreds of years, and the language was relatively unadulterated by more recent forms of English. But a professor at West Virginia University wrote that he had uncovered over 100 English dialects in Virginia alone, and could tell exactly which village in England was the source of the dialect. Just how do you pronounce 'Norfolk' -- the English way of course --Norfuck. Visited the Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg lately? Bryson's book discusses the rules of English grammar--which it seems are really the rules and terminology of Latin. Oh we've had many an argument about split infinitives in our office (we develop publications). Did you ever wonder why you can't split an infinitive? Well it's because the infinitive form in Latin (as well as the romance languages) is one word--and it can't be split. The Spanish say "leer" and the English say "to read" -- Now, why can't you split that sucker? Not only is English being exported around the world, English absorbs everything it touches. But for Spanish terms, there would be no dialog in "Western" movies. Cowboys can't function without lassos, broncos, chaps, rodeos, canyons, or pumas. And even the venerable "buckaroo" is just the cowboy way of saying "vaccaro" -- the Spanish for cowboy. If you ask for a "chocolate cookie" did you know you are using Aztec and Dutch words? And Yankees?Those were the "Johns" (jantje) the Dutch sailors yelled at when the British turned New Amsterdam into New York. And how many occupations are embedded in last names? We can think of Smiths, Shepherds and Foresters, but what about Bowman, Archers, Carpenters, Millers (Mueller), and Van der Veldt (from the field), Van der Meer (from the sea) and Roosevelt (rose field). Gee, isn't Roosevelt as American as apple pie? Swearing is the most fun. Gosh even that work F---is just a good Dutch term for having sex. It wouldn't even be a curse word if the Dutch had won the war. And what about Pumpernickle bread. Had any lately. In German, it means the Devil's f---. Well you'll just have to read the book to get the good stuff.
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Summary: TWIST-TONGUE
Review: Amusing and entertaining, this book is a must for language buffs and Bryson's fans. As always, he has a poignant sense of humour, in all situations: you can't avoid laughing out loud in certain linguistic predicaments, where you find yourself as one of the culprits. Both as an idiosyncratic traveller and a linguist, the author depicts human situations true to life and critical in approach, while tickling your funny bone in the process. What better way to enjoy a book?
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Summary: Bottoms up, Cheers and all that!
Review: Not just for Anglophiles! If I'd had textbooks like this in school, I might have passed! I chugged through this in a couple of days when I should have been doing something practical. Read it for the laughs, get a bit of education stuck between your teeth. Only Bill Bryson can make the sour study of language so sweet. This book is for more than just Anglophiles and Bryson enthusiasts, it's for anyone who enjoys a good laugh and a comical, yet highly-researched and authoritative look through history's drawers. A cheery romp through our past gives you a great sense for how we got here and why English is so screwed up! An amalgamation of tongues with a basis in German (yet having the fewest words in common with Deutschland -- Kindergarten comes to mind) we find the path to modern English somewhat tortuous, amazingly confused, and always funny. A former copy editor, I was once a great stickler for "doin' English right." I've changed my philosophy, understanding that the incredible power of English lies in its mutability over time, changing, growing, enhancing, and staying modern. Cheers, BilFish
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