The Mother Tongue
| The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way | ||||||||||||
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Hardcover - USA - 1st edition. |
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The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way is a book about the English language written by Bill Bryson and published in July 1990.
In the book, Bryson discusses a variety of topics about the English language, including its origins, structure, and its similarities and differences to other languages. In typical Bryson fashion, the book is filled with interesting and humorous tidbits titbits of information.
Personal
| Own? | Paperback - USA. |
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| Read? | Paperback - USA. |
| Finished | 2025-02-20. |
I saw this book in a bookstore in my 20s and found it interesting, but didn't buy it at the time. Over the years, I would frequently flip though it when I found myself in the language section at a bookstore. Later, I found an audiobook and started listening, but it was corrupt after a few chapters. One time when I was looking for a new book to read at dinner, because I forgot the book I was currently reading, I bought this one since I already knew I would like it.
Review
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Overall: |
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Good
- The book talks about all the unique and interesting aspects of English pertaining to its structure and history. And, in doing so, it also covers the many interesting concepts from other languages as they compare to English. For example, for much of the history of England, the aristocracy didn't even speak English, only the poor peasantry did.
- Bryson covers the violence and suffering caused by tyrants trying to force linguistic conformity, both historic and modern.
- He talks about how words and entire languages go extinct. For example English used to have a distinction between addressing an individual or multiple people "thou" vs "you," or something very far away versus slightly far away, "far" vs "yonder." He also discusses how languages are sometimes saved from extinction.
- I like the point about English becoming more simplified, not because of grammar nazis, in fact, just the opposite, because people who don't speak the language alter it to make it easier. Many irregular verbs were simplified because of this.
- The section on where new words come from is very enlightening. They can be adopted from other languages, by altering existing words, misunderstandings can stick, and sometimes created seemingly out of nothing.
- He talks about how frequently we mispronounce words, often changing them based on where the fall in a sentence. For example, "I'll just get her," becomes "aldges gedder."
- It's nice that he points out how we're able to have a better understanding of how people used to pronounce words, again, not because of the aristocrats, but because of the bad spellers who spelled words phonetically rather than "properly."
- He discusses a theory of how native born people readopt their hometown accent when they return as a source of pride and to not be viewed as a tourists.
- A very important thing Bryson points out are languages that were forced to come about. Gullah, for example, is a dialect created by African slaves. During the Atlantic slave trade, Africans were kidnapped from all over the continent, and they all spoke different languages. In order to communicate in the USA, they intermixed their various words and the result borrows from around 30 different native African languages!
- His section on the merits of alphabets and pictograms is enlightening. He points out that alphabets are great for understanding how a word will sound, but pictograms have the benefit of being read by anyone regardless of the word they use for it. For example, Mandarin and Cantonese sound very different, so even people living in the same country won't be able to understand each other, but, because they share something like 98% of the same pictograms, they can fluently read each other's writing! Another example I overlooked until he pointed it out is that Arabic numbers are also pictograms. Whether someone speaks English, French, Greek, or Japanese, we can all understand the value of a number.
- His list of examples of English experts making grammatical errors in their own books is quite humbling, especially when the author is very seriously arguing for the firmness of the language.
- In the chapter on profanity he explains some of the ridiculous lengths people have gone to to avoid saying a taboo word which really teaches how silly it is to think something as innocuous as a word should be taboo.
Bad
- I wish there were illustrations for the older writing systems that are mentioned.
- It would be nice if the there were a glossary with examples for some of the more esoteric terms. I had to lookup several terms which I hadn't heard since school: progressive verb form, substantive nouns, present indicative, etc.
- When examples are given, the author doesn't distinguish between homographs. Most of the time I understood from the context, but not always.
- The chapter on names is a bit exhausting. The section on place names gives dozens of examples of names that are far from phonetic when only a few are necessary.
- There are times when Bryson doesn't elaborate. For example, he says the word "puppy" was risqué in 19th century England, but not why.
- I've read that professional linguists have listed a variety of problems with this book including incorrect etymologies and other historical facts. I don't doubt these claims, as Bryson is not a professional linguist himself, and I don't fault him since this book is made for a popular audience where scholastic rigor isn't as important. However, as far as I know, there haven't been any subsequent editions to correct his errors.
Ugly
- Nothing
Media
Hardcover - USA - 1st edition.
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