English And How It Got That Way - The Mother Tongue

What a pleasant trip through some of the more interesting quirks of our language. I even learned a few new things, and I was an English major, then teacher. Bryson has an easy, casual style that makes for fun reading even when the subject is academic.

If you have ever wondered why you can't spell, or if you have ever tried to explain English to someone learning it as a second language, this book is for you! It is witty and informative but, most of all, it let me know I never again have to worry about split infinitives or feel guilty about ending a sentence with a preposition. I liked it enough that I bought a copy for my cousin - I'm not letting go of mine! JFS

Funny, erudite and definitely for lovers of the English language. Author Bill Bryson does a wonderful job of bringing together many different sources on the English language and then spinning a tale of how our current English came to be.

I read this book about 20 years ago, about the time it first came out and again a week ago. The same witty style and evidence of decent research greeted me one more time. Lots of good history of the world's favorite language here in and don't miss the section on Spoonerisms and how they got started. Dr. Knockemus

This book is extraordinary, as are most of Bryson's books. But here, I learned something new on virtually every page, and it's all about the language we all speak. The sections that deal with the history of words and phrases provide amazing detail of how so many other languages and cultures are incorporated into the modern English language. Also, I used to bristle when some new and largely ungrammatical words or phrases started to appear, but the book makes you appreciate that one of the core strengths of English is the fact that it mutates more than just about any language that has ever existed.

Funny, erudite and definitely for lovers of the English language. Author Bill Bryson does a wonderful job of bringing together many different sources on the English language and then spinning a tale of how our current English came to be.

I read this book about 20 years ago, about the time it first came out and again a week ago. The same witty style and evidence of decent research greeted me one more time. Lots of good history of the world's favorite language here in and don't miss the section on Spoonerisms and how they got started. Dr. Knockemus

This book is extraordinary, as are most of Bryson's books. But here, I learned something new on virtually every page, and it's all about the language we all speak. The sections that deal with the history of words and phrases provide amazing detail of how so many other languages and cultures are incorporated into the modern English language. Also, I used to bristle when some new and largely ungrammatical words or phrases started to appear, but the book makes you appreciate that one of the core strengths of English is the fact that it mutates more than just about any language that has ever existed.

Interesting information that has to have been a monumental task for the author. Not an easy read, but very interesting for writers, teachers, and others that are intrigued by the English language and its development and changes both over time and from place to place.

Bryson always has had a marvelous way with both words and ideas. He does not disappoint. His thoughts are wide-ranging and often very amusing. From the vantage point of a stranger to English I would think it an excruciatingly difficult language to learn. We native speakers have enough trouble as it is.

I'm an ESL teacher with plenty of overseas experience teaching both general and academic English.With such a complex language, there's no way anyone person is going to know all the answers no matter how much training or experience you've had. There are always going to be times when students raise the unexpected.This book provides wideranging essential background information....and does it in a humerous way that is easy on the overworked mind.It should be included as a baseline text for any ESL training course....and in all teachers' resource files.

Bryson takes you through the linguistic and historical journey of English in a wonderfully informal, comedic, anecdotal, and fact-based way. I'm a high school English teacher and I'm having my juniors and seniors read it for class--they love it!! He reaches a wide array of audiences, trust me, making a possibly dry subject a fun and accessible one.

Bill Bryson doesnt know very much. This books is a community college level of scholarship. Embarrassing for a professional writer to have put this out. The first two lectures in History of English Language covers it all.

Another funny, entertaining, and enlightening book from Bill Bryson; interrupted it to read something else, but I picked it back up and didn't miss a beat. On my list: A WALK IN THE WOODS - Bryson makes the world a happier, better place, a day or two with his musings makes sense of our crazy world!!!

Bryson takes you through the linguistic and historical journey of English in a wonderfully informal, comedic, anecdotal, and fact-based way. I'm a high school English teacher and I'm having my juniors and seniors read it for class--they love it!! He reaches a wide array of audiences, trust me, making a possibly dry subject a fun and accessible one.

Bill Bryson doesnt know very much. This books is a community college level of scholarship. Embarrassing for a professional writer to have put this out. The first two lectures in History of English Language covers it all.

Another funny, entertaining, and enlightening book from Bill Bryson; interrupted it to read something else, but I picked it back up and didn't miss a beat. On my list: A WALK IN THE WOODS - Bryson makes the world a happier, better place, a day or two with his musings makes sense of our crazy world!!!

A wonderful balance of entertainment and molecular data, this molecular exploration of arguably the world's richest and most dimensional form of communication helped me understand so much about our beloved language now being eroded by emails and social media at an alarming speed. A Bryson exploration is ALWAYS a guaranteed winner.... can it save our ability to be articulate 50 years from now?

Love Bryson, loved this book. So informative, and written in true Bryson fashion - witty and succinct. My wife is a retired English lit teacher, and she loved it also. Highly recommended. I read everything Bryson publishes.

I was suspicious of many tales Bill Bryson tells in this book but didn't bother to verify because I read the book mostly during commute so it wasn't the most convenient thing to do. But when I reached the part when he talks about Chinese my suspicion was confirmed. See, Chinese is my first language. It appears that Bill Bryson is more interested in embellishing and exaggerating than writing a good book.

This is not the only Bill Bryson book I had to put down part-way. It seems to be a problem with the author and not any particular subject he happens to be writing.

Mr. Bryson's "The Mother Tongue" is an easy read, but unfortunately it contains many factual mistakes and, as one other reviewer put it so well, "sloppy scholarship". I am a native speaker of German and I wish he would have gotten some help from a German linguist for his comparisons of English with German.

My problem with the book started with the "Acknowledgments" where Mr Bryson writes "certain passages in this book originally appeared in somewhat altered form in TWA Ambassador and in the Canadian textbook Language in Action, and I wish to thank both organizations for permission to reproduce those excerpts here." My understanding of the word "to alter" in its form "altered" is that it refers to something that has been changed from its original form. Bryson's sentence hence implies that the chapters in question had been written initially for the book "The Mother Tongue" and were only later changed to be published in the TWA magazine. I think this is hardly likely and, in fact, the altered versions of the original articles are in the book, not the other way around. If somebody uses language incorrectly already in the acknowledgments section, my trust in the author's expertise about language is seriously impacted.

I read about one third of this book, but I did not finish it, because I am afraid it may hurt my understanding of the English language more than it will help. There are several mistakes obvious to me, so I am afraid other "facts" might by incorrect as well. I simply cannot trust Bryson.

This book is classic Bill Bryson in that there is a high measure of both wit and fact on almost every page. The wide-ranging Bryson turned his focus to the development of “the mother tongue,” and the result is an extremely well-researched primer on the history of the English language. It’s all of the interesting and engaging parts of our linguistic past with only the most necessary additions of technical jargon. If you know your parts of speech, you should be able to get through this book easily.

The title should be taken very literally - Bryson gives a great overview of how English got the way it is today. As far as why English is the way it is, Bryson freely admits that he - and the experts - really don’t have much more than guesses. What Bryson reveals over the course of the book is really that English, like any other language, developed through an organic, bottom-up process that took place over thousands of years and through repeated collisions between linguistic groups through war, conquest, trade, and eventually, media.

Bryson starts his jaunt through English’s history with the very basics of how humans came to acquire speech in the first place. One of the distinguishing physical characteristics of homo sapiens is our descended larynx. This allows us to speak, with the downside that it also means we can choke on our food pretty easily. This seems like a minor point, but this physiological aspect of human speech set the stage for us to develop far more complex ways of communicating verbally than any other hominid before us.

It’s difficult, however, for scholars today to piece together what primitive language would have sounded like because very few, if any, fragments of written languages of the Indo-European and Proto-Indo-European have survived. The true origins and forms of human language remain shrouded in mystery. Even where we have a solid base of sources to work with, the reasons why some languages survive and expand their reach while others fade out are far from obvious to us.

In a chapter titled “The First Thousand Years,” Bryson traces the early development of what would eventually become English. Following the removal of Roman troops from what is now the United Kingdom, various northern European tribes such as the Saxons, Jutes, and Angles overtook most of the island in a series of opportunistic encroachments on Celtic land. Unfortunately, that’s about all we know. For reasons not completely understood, the Angles and Jutes disappeared as the Saxons dominated the island. Yet, the obscure Angles would leave their mark in the name “England.” Invasions from Scandinavia, and later, Norman France, would change the language dramatically again, infusing it with new vocabulary and syntax.

With the general contours of English’s history established, Bryson takes us through various dimensions of our language, from how words are formed, to variations in pronunciation/dialect, spelling, and more. Throughout, he masterfully presents English in all its weirdness and beauty. In his “Where Words Come From” chapter, we learn that we have six prefixes that allow us to express negation in English: anti-, il-, in-, im-, un-, and non-. Yet, this system is somewhat messy. Imagine the frustration that foreigners feel when they learn that something can be invisible but not unvisible or nonvisible. Impossible, but never nonpossible or antipossible. For even more confusion, some words that have negative prefixes aren’t actually expressing negation. Something that is invaluable, is actually very valuable, and the same goes for the word “priceless.”

Overall, Bryson does a remarkable job at gathering the research that has been done on this topic and letting the reader know where the experts haven’t reached a consensus. Even in instances where there is widespread agreement on certain grammatical rules, Bryson shows that these “rules” are often nothing more than someone’s preference that grew to be influential enough that the rest of us assume they’re laws - again, no one knows why this happens. The idea that sentences shouldn’t end in a preposition, for example, comes from an English clergyman and amateur grammarian named Robert Lowth. Lowth’s “A Short Introduction to English Grammar” is the source of so many of English’s most pedantic rules that still plague students of the language to this day, yet his claims to authority on the language are fairly weak compared to his influence.

The real story of English, in Bryson’s rendering of it, is the remarkable flexibility and resiliency of the language. So many experts lament the decline of English when new words, dialects, and accents enter into it. But that’s probably the biggest reason why English has not only survived, but become a global language. English’s ability to draw words, grammar, and syntax from such a wide variety of other language - Old Norse, Norman French, Latin, Greek, and so on - is English’s greatest source of strength, and has made it on the whole the most varied and complete language on the planet.

Surprisingly, after spending most of the book talking about the dynamic and resilient nature of the English language, Bryson ends the book with a somewhat somber lament about a particular threat to it. Contrary to Robert Burchfield’s prediction that in 200 years American and British English speakers will not be able to understand each other, Bryson suggests that the rise of mass communications will actually narrow the differences between our languages. Instead of the interesting and often humorous local variations in dialect throughout the English-speaking world, Bryson fears the impoverishment of the language due to the homogenizing effect of global blockbuster movies and other large-scale cultural transmissions. And this doesn’t even take the internet - which was still a few years away from widespread consumer adoption in 1990 - into consideration.

On that note, I came away from this book wishing for Bryson to re-release it with some updated sections on how technology - specifically the internet - has affected our language. Discussion forums, chat rooms, and other platforms have allowed for the development of unique subcultures that are unbound by geography and have their own writing and speaking conventions that occasionally slip into the mainstream. Beyond that, emojis, abbreviations, memes, and other shorthand we use to communicate digitally have crept into our language, and getting Bryson’s well-researched take on this trend and the wider impact it’s had on how we communicate would be fascinating.

Language and history lovers alike will find a lot to enjoy here. Bryson’s keen sense of when and how to weave so many fascinating facts into a coherent narrative is incredible. Through his telling of English’s growth from a peasant tongue to the language of global business and culture, we learn how the tool we use to make sense of our world - language - and the world we live in today are intimately bound together.

Book took forEVER to arrive. I ordered a book from London at the same time that I ordered The Mother Tongue, and the book from London arrived weeks earlier. Not only that, but the condition of The Mother Tongue was poorer than the seller described.

This is an amusing and enjoyable romp through the history of the English language, and a delight for closet linguisticists like myself. Bill Bryson takes us on a fascinating and funny tour of the history of the English language, how it became a (arguably the) world language, how its usage, spelling and grammar vary with time, location and context, and how it continues to develop. However like this reader it's older than you think...

the store have been pushing this book hard recently, and I downloaded the book in Kindle format in the expectation that it was a relatively new work, with an apparent publication date of 2009. However reading the opening chapter I got a strange sense of deja vu, and realised I had read it before, but evidently long before the advent of either e-reading or publishing and cataloguing my own reviews. I reckon I last read this not long after its original publication in 1990, so about a generation ago! It has rewarded a re-read, but has left me thinking how much better a book it might be for an refresh.

A lot has changed in the last 25 years which directly affects our use of language, and particularly English. Foremost in my mind are the end of the Cold War, the rise of the Asian economic powerhouses presenting relatively direct services to the rest of the world, and, above all, the development of the Internet and mobile technologies. The latter have brought the expectation that pretty much any two humans, anywhere, may have both the wish and the technical means to communicate, and across national boundaries will usually use English to do so. Technology has both led and enabled big changes to how we use language, and we increasingly design our messages and evolve our language around the constraints and possibilities of the transmission and consumption platforms. "Thanx", "R U OK" and "GR8" don't appear in this book, but they belong there.

It would be great to understand whether the wider use of English is driving greater homogenisation of usage and acceptance of obvious simplifications, or whether we are just further "baking in" the idiosyncrasies, and adding a new layer on top. Does the availability of online resources such as dictionaries and thesauruses drive the wider adoption of correct usage, or is this outweighed by the need for simplification of the message? Do tools such as spell checking, predictive text and automated translation increase or decrease individual language skills?

In fairness to Bill Bryson, he does recognise some of these challenges in his final chapter, and makes many of the right calls on general direction, but the book itself is now a period piece the other side of major technological and geopolitical changes.

Despite the fact that Bryson wrote this book when he had been living in Yorkshire for many years, it has a bit of an American focus, typically assuming that the reader knows the American usage but needs the British explaining. Once you've tuned into this it's fine, but it can throw British (and I suspect other) readers slightly at first. Other slight downsides are that like some of Bryson's other books it's arguably a bit too long, and in the last third some of the examples get a bit repetitive, and also some other reviewers suggest that the fact checking, especially around non-English languages, is perhaps a bit suspect.

Having said all that, the books remains highly readable, full of wonderful anecdotes and nuggets of knowledge, and if you accept its horizon, well fills a role which I don't think is met by any other book which I have read. Enjoy it, but acknowledge and forgive that it's slightly showing its age.

The Mother Tongue

Bill Bryson is an American journalist who lives in England, worked for London newspapers, and wrote two other books. This 1990 book has 245 pages, a Select Bibliography, and an Index. This is an entertaining and educational book, but it may not be totally accurate. [The work OK is said to come from a West African language (p.165).]

Chapter 1 says English is "full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner" because of its complexities. English has become the most global of languages (p.12). The richness of English vocabulary allows shades of distinction not found in other languages (p.13). Other languages can make distinctions lacking in English (p.14). English is simpler (free of gender) and concise (p.19), but with jargon and complexity. Mankind can speak because of a descended larynx (Chapter 2). Many languages are descended from Indo-European over 9,000 years ago. Some died off (p.32). Chapter 3 notes the differences. English has a simpler grammar (p.35). The author notes many facts about languages. Chapter 4 tells about the changes in west European languages. The end of Roman rule in Britain resulted in the decline of the Celts (p.49). Old English did not have the silent letters or phonetic inconsistencies of modern English spelling (p.51). Changes around 1500 led to "The most wildly unphonetic spellings of any language" (p.61).

English retains the richest vocabulary and diverse meanings of any language (Chapter 5). Words are created by error, adopted from other languages, arise from nowhere, by changed meanings, or by adding prefixes or suffixes (p.75). English is the only language with so many words spelled the same way but pronounced differently (Chapter 6). The varieties of sounds varies geographically (Chapter 7). Pronunciation can signify class or background (p.106). English can be a very difficult language to spell correctly (Chapter 8). The Norman Conquest affected spelling (p.124). The printing press brought uniform spelling but preserved inconsistencies (p.126). It is a good thing there was never any academy to control the English language (Chapter 9). Meanings shift and change in response to common usage (p.145). Dictionary definitions often fail to convey the nuances of English (p.150).

Chapter 10 discusses dictionaries. New words became part of the vocabulary (Chapter 11). [Bryson doesn't mention the effects of radio towards uniform speech (p.169).] American usage affects English usage (p.175). How many people in the world speak English (Chapter 12)? An international language can reduce business costs (p.188). [The justification for Esperanto (p.191)?] Chapter 13 explains the history behind place names and family names. Chapter 14 discusses "dirty words". Words once unacceptable are innocuous today (p.220). People play games with words (Chapter 15). Chapter 16 discusses the future of English in the US. What is causing "declining educational standard" (p.242)? Will British and American English become dissimilar (p.243)? Movies, television, books, magazines, record albums, etc. are influences that bind the countries together.

The Mother Tongue

Bill Bryson is an American journalist who lives in England, worked for London newspapers, and wrote two other books. This 1990 book has 245 pages, a Select Bibliography, and an Index. This is an entertaining and educational book, but it may not be totally accurate. [The work OK is said to come from a West African language (p.165).]

Chapter 1 says English is "full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner" because of its complexities. English has become the most global of languages (p.12). The richness of English vocabulary allows shades of distinction not found in other languages (p.13). Other languages can make distinctions lacking in English (p.14). English is simpler (free of gender) and concise (p.19), but with jargon and complexity. Mankind can speak because of a descended larynx (Chapter 2). Many languages are descended from Indo-European over 9,000 years ago. Some died off (p.32). Chapter 3 notes the differences. English has a simpler grammar (p.35). The author notes many facts about languages. Chapter 4 tells about the changes in west European languages. The end of Roman rule in Britain resulted in the decline of the Celts (p.49). Old English did not have the silent letters or phonetic inconsistencies of modern English spelling (p.51). Changes around 1500 led to "The most wildly unphonetic spellings of any language" (p.61).

English retains the richest vocabulary and diverse meanings of any language (Chapter 5). Words are created by error, adopted from other languages, arise from nowhere, by changed meanings, or by adding prefixes or suffixes (p.75). English is the only language with so many words spelled the same way but pronounced differently (Chapter 6). The varieties of sounds varies geographically (Chapter 7). Pronunciation can signify class or background (p.106). English can be a very difficult language to spell correctly (Chapter 8). The Norman Conquest affected spelling (p.124). The printing press brought uniform spelling but preserved inconsistencies (p.126). It is a good thing there was never any academy to control the English language (Chapter 9). Meanings shift and change in response to common usage (p.145). Dictionary definitions often fail to convey the nuances of English (p.150).

Chapter 10 discusses dictionaries. New words became part of the vocabulary (Chapter 11). [Bryson doesn't mention the effects of radio towards uniform speech (p.169).] American usage affects English usage (p.175). How many people in the world speak English (Chapter 12)? An international language can reduce business costs (p.188). [The justification for Esperanto (p.191)?] Chapter 13 explains the history behind place names and family names. Chapter 14 discusses "dirty words". Words once unacceptable are innocuous today (p.220). People play games with words (Chapter 15). Chapter 16 discusses the future of English in the US. What is causing "declining educational standard" (p.242)? Will British and American English become dissimilar (p.243)? Movies, television, books, magazines, record albums, etc. are influences that bind the countries together.

The Mother Tongue

Bill Bryson is an American journalist who lives in England, worked for London newspapers, and wrote two other books. This 1990 book has 245 pages, a Select Bibliography, and an Index. This is an entertaining and educational book, but it may not be totally accurate. [The work OK is said to come from a West African language (p.165).]

Chapter 1 says English is "full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner" because of its complexities. English has become the most global of languages (p.12). The richness of English vocabulary allows shades of distinction not found in other languages (p.13). Other languages can make distinctions lacking in English (p.14). English is simpler (free of gender) and concise (p.19), but with jargon and complexity. Mankind can speak because of a descended larynx (Chapter 2). Many languages are descended from Indo-European over 9,000 years ago. Some died off (p.32). Chapter 3 notes the differences. English has a simpler grammar (p.35). The author notes many facts about languages. Chapter 4 tells about the changes in west European languages. The end of Roman rule in Britain resulted in the decline of the Celts (p.49). Old English did not have the silent letters or phonetic inconsistencies of modern English spelling (p.51). Changes around 1500 led to "The most wildly unphonetic spellings of any language" (p.61).

English retains the richest vocabulary and diverse meanings of any language (Chapter 5). Words are created by error, adopted from other languages, arise from nowhere, by changed meanings, or by adding prefixes or suffixes (p.75). English is the only language with so many words spelled the same way but pronounced differently (Chapter 6). The varieties of sounds varies geographically (Chapter 7). Pronunciation can signify class or background (p.106). English can be a very difficult language to spell correctly (Chapter 8). The Norman Conquest affected spelling (p.124). The printing press brought uniform spelling but preserved inconsistencies (p.126). It is a good thing there was never any academy to control the English language (Chapter 9). Meanings shift and change in response to common usage (p.145). Dictionary definitions often fail to convey the nuances of English (p.150).

Chapter 10 discusses dictionaries. New words became part of the vocabulary (Chapter 11). [Bryson doesn't mention the effects of radio towards uniform speech (p.169).] American usage affects English usage (p.175). How many people in the world speak English (Chapter 12)? An international language can reduce business costs (p.188). [The justification for Esperanto (p.191)?] Chapter 13 explains the history behind place names and family names. Chapter 14 discusses "dirty words". Words once unacceptable are innocuous today (p.220). People play games with words (Chapter 15). Chapter 16 discusses the future of English in the US. What is causing "declining educational standard" (p.242)? Will British and American English become dissimilar (p.243)? Movies, television, books, magazines, record albums, etc. are influences that bind the countries together.

I had to read this book for my summer reading for English and at first it was interesting but then it was just completely boring. I never finished the book because every time I sat down to read it, I would fall asleep 5 minutes later. Other than that, it arrived quickly and on time which was very nice.

English is weird. Every once in a while, I get the distinct feeling that how we speak, write, spell, and communicate just doesn’t make any sense. Recently, I was thinking about the oddities of the pronunciation of dough (doe), rough (ruff), and through (thru). How did we get to a language in which “ough” has multiple sounds but none have a “g” or an “h” sound?

Well, I googled it. It turns out Bill Bryson wrote a whole book about it. I recently devoured “A Walk in the Woods,” so I thought this would have all the wit and sarcasm that I loved about that journey. I wasn’t wrong, but this was a very different type of trip. For one, it didn’t have the character of Bill actually going anywhere, but it was surely a younger Bill exploring his own curiosities.

This book follows the history of language and English. How it is a ruckus, bizarre, innovative, rule-making, rule-breaking, human, and cultural invention. There were so many asides and fun little quibbles that left me interested. It’s foray into word games and pronunciation were fascinating. However, it was a bit jumpy and stream-of-mind. I know I likes what I read, but I can’t remember a lot of it. Sometimes Mother Tongue reads like a reference book and other times like a stand-up comedian.

As a physicist, I can’t complete a review about a book on language without one of my favorite quotes/stories from Richard Feynman (a terrific storyteller in his own right):

And the next Monday, when they were all back to work, all the kids were playing in the field, and then one kid said to me, "See that bird? What kind of a bird is that?" And I said "I haven't the slightest idea what kind of bird it is." He says, "it's a Brown-throated Thrush" or something, "Your father doesn't tell you anything!" But it was the opposite, my father had taught me, looking at a bird he says, "Do you know what that bird is? It's a Brown-throated Thrush. But in Portuguese it's a Honto La Pero, in Italian A Chutera Pikita," he says, "in Chinese it's a Chong-ong-tok, in Japanese Apatara kupudecha, etc." He says, "now if you know all the languages you want to know the name of that bird is, and when you finish with all that, he says, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You only know about humans in different places and what they call the bird." Now he says, "now let's look at the bird and what it's doing."
- Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, BBC Horizon, 1981

This is a most enjoyable journey through the odyssey and vagaries of the English language. True, its vocabulary is abundantly repetitious and the spelling and pronunciation are bewildering, but its grammar is ingeniously simple. Its history from Anglo-Saxon through Old-English and Norman-French to contemporary English is extraordinary and if you are familiar with German and French, the resulting end-stage synthesis even begins to make sense. Much of this has of course been known a long time, but it still provides deep-seated relief to once again clarify the pronunciation of colonel and the origins of bridegroom, poppycock and short shrift. For 245 pages Bill Bryson happily entertains you and even reminds you that you really did want to know what language the Luxemburgers speak, how many Canadians speak French and whether the Celtic speaking Scots, Welsh and Bretons can understand each other (the Welsh and Bretons do indeed). Etymology will always remain a most fascinating adventure.

Bill Bryson has carved out a niche for himself as a popular travel writer with an interest in language. In “The Mother Tongue,” he has written a book that is engaging, easy to read (and re-read), and not terribly reliable. It’s not that he makes stuff up, it’s just that – lacking any specialized training as a linguist – he is irresistibly drawn to the colorful anecdote and the amusing tale. Likewise he is not first and foremost a fact-checker. Rather, he is content back up his assertions by citing sources including “The Economist” and “Time” magazine. If an allegation has been printed there that jibes with his thesis, he repeats it, though he rarely bothers to inquire into whether it has been debunked. His overriding goal, after all, is not to ascertain the truth but to sell enough books to earn a decent living.

Most people produce and consume their native tongue without giving it a second thought. For Bryson, though, language is a source of delight. He has collected such a treasure trove of odd facts that he can effortlessly trot out one amusing example after another. It seems petty to single out a dubious one (do the Eskimos really have fifty words for snow?) and subject it to close examination. All the same, he should never be confused with an authority on linguistics. He is instead a diligent collector of entertaining stories, a good number of which might well be true.

The chapter on English as a World Language, for example, includes examples culled from foreign advertisements and menus, an inexhaustible source of merriment. I challenge any native speaker to read this section without laughing out loud, or at least breaking into a smile. My personal favorite: Hand-Maid Queer Aid, a Japanese brand of chocolate. This is the sort of humor that a native speaker could never come up with but that non-native speakers create effortlessly, if unintentionally.

When an amateur writes about a scientific topic, the result is likely to be popularization. The professionals should not criticize him for lacking scientific rigor, for that is a standard to which he does not aspire. Bryson seems most reliable when it comes to comparing American and British usage; even here, his field research, such as it is, appears to have been conducted chiefly in the streets and pubs of Yorkshire. Still, he manages to show that the routine denigration of Americanisms is often based on misinformation, as many of the alleged barbarisms, far from being recent imports, in fact existed for centuries in England.

For the most part, Bryson is content to cover familiar, expected topics: words whose meaning has changed (sometimes radically), the on-going war between the pre- and descriptivists, Shakespeare’s contributions to the language, and so on. And there is no doubting his point that “English has become the most global of languages” (pg. 12). How did it get that way? Like most people who attempt an answer, he tends to think that the spread of any particular tongue – or its disappearance – depends on some innate features; in the case of English, on the “subtlety and flexibility built into the language” (pg. 51). Yet dozens of languages spoken by Native Americans, for example, did not decline and die out because they were insufficiently flexible, but because their speakers were rounded up and sometimes exterminated. English survived both the Viking raids and the Normal conquest not because of the subtlety of the language but because enough speakers of it managed to survive and propagate themselves. Like many writers who fall in love with a particular tongue, Bryson thinks its continued existence and eventual triumph must be due to something intrinsic, such as its flexibility, rather than the success of its speakers at reproducing themselves and spreading their dominion. The growth or contraction of a particular tongue depends mostly on factors such as geography, history and population. This elemental truth is overlooked by those who fall in love with their favored language and attribute its success to some essential virtue they claim it possesses uniquely.

The spread of any language has little or nothing to do with its inner qualities, and everything to do with factors such as international commerce, colonization, and the projection of maritime power. Has Bryson not heard the adage that a language is a dialect with an army and navy? If Russia or Germany had been a sea-going force from the 16th century on, the linguistic map of the globe would look very different today. The reason Spanish is spoken across so much of South America has precious little to do with the peculiarities of the Spanish language.

Bryson gives no hint of holding American exceptionalist views. Indeed it would be hard to hold such views and live abroad as long as he did and emerge unscathed. But he does hold to a kind of English-language exceptionalism. Not that he claims English is more beautiful, but he does assert it is unusually open to change. And who knows, perhaps there is some truth to this. He posits that another reason it has spread across the world is because of its rich vocabulary (evidenced by the need for the thesaurus). English allegedly has 200,000 words in common use, compared to 184,000 in German and a mere 100,000 in French.

Yet skeptical readers would like to see greater evidence of close familiarity with a range of other tongues. It’s easier to sell English-language exceptionalism when you are writing for an audience that is overwhelmingly monolingual. Without openly pandering, Bryson is able to flatter his readers by assuring them that they are speakers of a great language – maybe the greatest ever. Just look at how fruitfully we multiply new expressions and how eagerly they are taken up by a grateful world. Well okay then!

In sum, while critical reviewers have taken issue with this or that claim, almost no one has challenged Bryson’s central assertion, namely that there is something special about English itself that explains its current preeminence. Over the years, readers have agreed that the book is amusingly written and bursting with fun facts. The chief disagreement is about whether the errors are so numerous as to make the book unreliable, or whether they are inconsequential because after all it is not a reference work. Some have noted the contradiction between his repeated assertions that English is not inherently better than any other language, and his parallel argument that English has unique advantages when it comes to adaptability and generating new forms. What has been overlooked is the narrowness of his view, as though the spread of English is somehow a function of innate qualities of the language itself. He refuses to acknowledge that, to oversimplify a little, English is the world’s most popular second language for the same reason the dollar is the world’s most popular reserve currency.

I'm a language nerd (though not exactly an expert in anything; I'm a self-taught freelance editor with an eye for line edits). This book was recommended to me ages ago and I finally got around to reading it, and I'm really glad I did. There's so much going on here, from the history of the language to its current and past quirks and evolutions to its relationship with other languages to its future--and yes, even its swearing and wordplay (two of my favorite chapters).

I learned a few new words--which were described as being perfectly useful words but not in the common usage. My favorites were valleity--a mild desire that's too weak to be acted upon--and muliebrity--the state of being a woman. And another thing I thought was really interesting was how English does indeed have a bunch of "negative" words that don't have a positive version of themselves, like (as the author cites in examples) disheveled (but we're never "sheveled"), unkempt (but we're never "kempt"), and ruthless (but what would it mean to have ruth)? I especially liked his point about why some words developed and others didn't, like why do we have backlog and not forelog? My sister definitely would have used the word forelog to describe the massive amount of work she had to get out of the way before she could go on maternity leave. I need the word forelog in my life!

I also learned of the term for a word that has contradictory meanings: it's a contronym. Like, look up cleave and sanction. One I thought of that wasn't in there was nonplussed, which initially only meant "confused and surprised," but now it's evolving to basically mean the opposite--"unperturbed and not bothered." I never know which people mean when they use it unless there's context, and sometimes there isn't.

The chapters on how words are created were very interesting. Bryson outlines how new words are created either by error, by being adopted from other languages, by being created on purpose, or being changed through having something added or subtracted from them. Meanings also change over time--my favorite example was manufacture which used to mean "made by hand" (see the "manu" root?) but now basically means the opposite.

The bits on pronunciation were really fun. He discusses the way we use the word "have"--we'll pronounce it very different if we say "I have some homework to do" versus "I have to go now." (In the second example it sounds more like "haff" for most people. And he has this funny little bit about how we basically flap our mouth meat to make noises and then sometimes we laugh--the way he describes the physiological terms associated with laughing make it sound positively absurd, but that's what we do to express appreciation and humor. Weird.

One cool thing I never thought of before, which he outlines in his descriptions of how we investigate ancient language and more recent usage, is that we can look at misspellings and the rhymes used in poetry to determine how words were actually said in other times. That's so clever! I loved the bit where he went into detail about how certain terms survive in certain areas and you can tell where a person grew up because of them, such as determining whether someone says greatcoat, overcoat, or topcoat. (He described a weird little "inexplicable island of overcoat-wearers" in a surrounding area of people who used a different term, and I found that really interesting.)

I liked how the book really examined language experts, too. People have been trying to categorize and organize language for a very long time, so I enjoyed the explanations of dictionary development and how actually (of course) it often became very political as to what was included, how it was spelled, and who got to control the final word on what was correct. It's so interesting to see that, for example, Shakespeare didn't have a standard for spelling his own name, and things were much more in flux in the language before a certain time. I love how Bryson takes aim at the pedants actually being pretty insufferable and unreasonable, and his little rant on split infinitives is priceless.

The little survey of foreign use of English was hilarious! Especially, predictably, the bit about Japanese use of it. I don't know what it is about how Japanese translators mistranslate English that's so funny to English speakers, but it's there. The examples he featured reminded me strongly of when my sister lived in Japan and had a boy come into one of her jobs wearing a shirt that said "TESTOSTERONE," and how when I visited the country I got a razor in my hotel whose package said the following on the front: "Have good shaving for your fresh life." I still have the wrapper's instructions memorized: "Caution: A razor is cutlery. Be fully of handling. The rhinoceros of scrapping is to make an edge cover and do incombustible treatment. Stop use when wound. The boil are in the wrong point in the skin." I know a little bit about Japanese and found his description of the different types of alphabets to be misleading, though. Maybe he was just trying to make it seem more absurd than it is that Japanese has three categories of characters, but I saw some inaccuracies there and it made me wonder where else he stated facts that were corrupted or misunderstood. And the survey of bar names in England is great--they're always something weird. As Bryson says, "At a minimum the name should puzzle foreigners. This is a basic requirement of most British institutions."

And of course, the swearing chapter was pretty hilarious, though not quite as funny as I expected it would be. I especially liked the focus on prudery--how whenever there was a "decency" craze, first the words themselves and then even the euphemisms for the words would become rude. He discusses how in most languages the swear words are based on either filth, something profane, or something sacred--often all three. It is definitely interesting how often the names of saints or deities are brought into cursing, and how the body parts involved in sex and excretion are almost always incorporated into our swears no matter what language we speak. There's also some discussion of wordplay (including crossword puzzles, which I hate), and some descriptions of types of wordplay that are more popular in other languages--some of which are actually impossible in ours because we don't have words that do what theirs do. He also taught me another word: "Amphibology." Which refers to intentionally ambiguous sentences that can be taken one of two ways. He makes reference to "the famous, if no doubt apocryphal, notice in a restaurant saying customers who think our waiters are rude should see the manager."

The book was vastly entertaining and educational, though I do have to say its presentation didn't really lend itself well to memorability. I feel like I'll want to bring up some of these discussions in future conversations and I'll be left with "Yeah, I read something about that once, it said something like oh, something about that." Mainly because the information just kind of piles on and piles on, densely, with example after example without much room for digestion. I don't know that this would have been avoidable, though. It stayed lighthearted throughout and never felt like it descended into extremely academic discussion or prohibitively scholarly presentation--it was fine in tone and content for a layperson with geeky leanings, like me.

Entertaining pile of trivia about the English language (as well as many other languages). For example, "the military vehicle the tank got its name because during its secretive experimental phase people were encouraged to think it was a storage receptacle."

I'd had no idea how arbitrary the creation of our language was, and found myself quite stunned at times. Loved the idea that all languages might well be derivations of one original shared language.

I found it interesting that in writing a book (published in 1990) that documents the haphazard progress of the English language, Bill Bryson himself seems unconsciously to illustrate a shift in usage by moving randomly from his preferred 'male as default' bias (most examples use 'he') to an occasional 'he or she' and a rare singular pronoun 'they.'

Natasha Holme
Author of 'Lesbian Crushes and Bulimia: A Diary on How I Acquired my Eating Disorder'

Breezily written but basically well researched book covering the unique and historical quirks of our evolving language. It's a bit dated at this point and could use an update chapter, because quite a bit has already changed in the 21st century with respect to worldwide influences and especially the Internet. Addressing all the new words that have been created and the newest trends in crossover words would be interesting.

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.

Bill Bryson is a gifted writer and this book, like others he's written, is an enjoyable read. But I wonder how well researched it was. When Bryson touches on Chinese, for example, I found myself scratching my head, thinking, "Really? That doesn't seem right." For example, he cites "Mandarin Chinese, or Guoyo" on page 201. I am almost certain he means "Guoyu." He says "two women means quarrel and three women means gossip," yet these certainly are not the characters used for quarrel and gossip, and the character containing three women is usually translated adultery or worse--not gossip!

but I didn't know until I actually read some of the other reviews. I'll just deal with the mistakes that he made when he talked about Chinese/ Japanese:

1. Chinese words have more endings than just -n/-ng. There are many others;
2. There is no such thing as "Guoyo." The word is "GuoyU" (=national language).
3. There are no 7,000 Kanji in common use in Japan. There are 1948 Kanji listed in the Toyo Kanji.
4. There are more than 48 Katakana. I believe that there are either 52 or 56, but DEFINITELY more than 48.
5. NO, NO, NO, the writing of 2,500 years ago in China is not the same as the writing of today. Characters have been simplified (#1) and meanings tend to change over time (#2)
6. For some of the other languages (Cantonese and Hokkien), special characters had to be invented for those languages because Mandarin does not map 1:1 onto Cantonese or Hokkien (or any other others, for that matter), so some of the same grammatical structures didn't quite work.
7. Contrary to the figure of "215" words corresponding to "yi" I count 51 irreducible words that correspond to "yi" over the 4 tones in my Chinese dictionary. So, new words are made by adding extant words together. Two extant words makes one new word, but that does not make the first part of the irreducible word "yi" different each time.
8. No, there are not only 2,000 languages on the planet. There are something like 800 just in Papua New Guinea. I never knew that there were 1,200 or 1,600 in India, but even that number sounds suspect. If each state has one language, then that is less than 50 languages.
9. No, there is no such thing as a "Peking dialect." The language is called "Mandarin" in English and it is the "guanhua" (=official language). Without getting into the semantics of the done-to-death "Chinese= language or dialect?" debate, suffice it to say that there are at least 8 separate and mutually intelligible languages here.
10. Ha Ha Ha. There are supposed to be more English speakers in China than in the United States. I have heard that lie for the millionth time this week. And this book was written something like 20 years ago-- and that level still has not been achieved. Can one really be expected to believe that 1 person out of 4 in China speaks English-- or ever has (or ever will)?

The author did not make that much mention of Chinese and there were just loads of factual errors even in the things that he said. And so I wonder how many other things that he said (and of which I have no experience) are also just flatly wrong?

Yes, there are not that many people who speak English in lots of given places (chapter on "English as a World Language"), but the ones that do make it out do use English to communicate with each other.

This book has a lot of neat (if suspect) factoids, but one comes away with the distinct impression that this was just a really smart guy who has made a lot of observations stretching them too far to fill up a book.

5447. The Mother Tongue & How It Got That Way, by Bill Bryson (read 28 Feb 2017) This is an 1990 book and so is a bit out of date in some respects. But it is full of fascinatingly interesting things about language, and often funny as well. It is the 7th book by Bryson I have read. I am not sure he is really an authority on linguistics but he makes a real stab at showing he has done lots of research.

Bill Bryson nails it again with a great summary of our native language and how it got that way. He's a little unPc so a few passages might offend some ears today. And his writings predate the modern laptop and smartphone era, so his current examples have aged. But he nails his predictions as well as provides a breezy but very interesting background on English. I wouldn't start with this if you've never read bill and want to, but it's a really good primer on the subject without having to dive into dense linguistics tomes.

Bryson is one of the most entertaining writers around. His "Lost Continent" is one of the funniest books I've ever read, and I've liked everything he's written. "The Mother Tongue" is less sidesplitting than much of his work, but it makes up for that by the endless anecdotes about English.
Not all his facts are straight, though; see other reviews here for a list of some errors. One among many: he repeats the old and thoroughly discredited claim that the Eskimo language has more words for snow than English does; fifty words. In fact English has many more words than Eskimo (Inuit), though the agglutinative nature of the language means that it is hard to limit the word count in Eskimo. The claim is covered in detail in Geoffrey Pullum's "The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax".
"The Mother Tongue" is structured as a history of English. However, reading it, what one remembers are the little details. When he talks about the rising call for spelling reform at the end of the eighteenth century, he cites Noah Webster, lobbying Congress to make bad spelling a punishable offense. In the dicussion of Americanisms, to illustrate the inexplicable British hostility to American English, he quotes the stylebook of the Times of London: "'normalcy' should be left to the Americans who coined it"; in fact, 'normalcy' is a British coinage. These touches are what makes this book so good. They add a personal and amusing feel to material that is already fascinating.
Bryson covers quite a few topics. In addition to the chapters on spelling and Americanisms, and several devoted primarily to history, there are chapters on swearing, wordplay, pronunciation, word origins, names, usage and dialects. Each is full of colourful stories and is a pleasure to read.
Highly recommended. Just don't believe every single story.

A treasure house of the facts of the history of English and its oddities, but the "facts" are sometimes suspect, eg we do not say gill for girl in South Africa and I'm told that ndlebezakho (not hlebeshako) in Xhosa (incidentally President Mandela's mother tongue; not XoXa) freely translates as darn your ears (not your mother's ears) and is a mild admonition such as to a naughty child and not "the most provocative possible remark".
I was comforted by the examples of incorrect grammar and usage quoted from leading authors' works on English, to which one can add examples from the book itself, eg Some idea of the bewilderments ... are indicated; forbidden from; They find particular pleasure in taking old Norman names and mashing them around until they became; Often the names we know places by is.

My rating is based on the book's entertainment value, which is only impaired by the uncertainty as to when one can rely on what is said and when not. But I caution against mistaking the book as a serious reference work despite the academic-seeming footnotes. The author himself makes no such disclaimer, at least in my edition (1990).

I didn't read any reviews of "The Mother Tongue" before I read it. To tell the truth, I'm glad I didn't. I thoroughly enjoyed this book! I'm not a linguist, so I will take their word for it (in their negative reviews) that there are errors in this book. My copy is a first edition from 1990 - maybe changes have been made in later editions.

But if Bryson got some numbers and details wrong (even I knew that the Eskimo words for snow stuff was an old mistake, and recent DNA results show that people of European stock do indeed have Neanderthal DNA), there's plenty of information where he's using quotes, etc., that aren't mistakes. Best of all, Bryson's writing style is as if he's sitting in your living room telling a comic tale.

And, I think it is fair to say that there are disputes in linguistics - not everybody agrees on the way a word or language happened.

Not all changes to the language have been for the better. Shakespeare could chose between saying, "this hat" - "that hat" - and "yon hat". There is a neat distinction between the last two and it's too bad we don't use the latter anymore.

And how about how we've lost prefix or suffix-less forms, to the language's detriment. Bryson writes that we have "inept, disheveled, incorrigible, ruthless, unkempt - for which the positive form is missing. English would be richer if we could say admiringly of a tidy person, 'She's SO sheveled,' or praise a capable person for being full of ept or an energetic one for having heaps of ert. Many of these words did once have positive forms. Ruthless was companioned by Ruth, meaning compassion. One of Milton's poems contains the well-known line 'Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.' "

What do you do with a language where a word can have two meanings, opposite to each other?
Sanction = permission or forbiddance
Cleave = cut in two or stick together
Fast = stuck firmly in place or moving quickly

They occur, of course, because the language is constantly changing from one force or another. For example, "peruse actually means to read thoroughly, not glance through." This left me despairing. I have been fighting a losing battle to keep a reasonably original definition of "decimate". Originally, when a conquered army was captured, the Roman victor might chose to execute only 1 in 10 of the captured soldiers. Deci = tenth. So in modern terms, decimate actually means only a tenth is destroyed. But newspapers and news announcers insist on using it to mean near-total destruction. I am a curmudgeon about it - to no avail.

My favorite part of the book was about dialects. I watch a lot of BBC, and got a kick out of Bryson's description of the dialect called Fraffly (also called Hyperlect), "based on the aristocratic pronunciation of 'frightfully', as in "Weh sue fraffly gled yorkered calm' (We're so frightfully glad you could come). The main distinguishing characteristic of the speech is the ability to talk without moving the lips. (Prince Charles is an ace at this.)" Perhaps this is not the most scientific of paragraphs, but it is certainly entertaining.

As is the whole book. I very much enjoyed reading "The Mother Tongue".

Happy Reader

The Mother Tongue

Bill Bryson is an American journalist who lives in England, worked for London newspapers, and wrote two other books. This 1990 book has 245 pages, a Select Bibliography, and an Index. This is an entertaining and educational book, but it may not be totally accurate. [The work OK is said to come from a West African language (p.165).]

Chapter 1 says English is "full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner" because of its complexities. English has become the most global of languages (p.12). The richness of English vocabulary allows shades of distinction not found in other languages (p.13). Other languages can make distinctions lacking in English (p.14). English is simpler (free of gender) and concise (p.19), but with jargon and complexity. Mankind can speak because of a descended larynx (Chapter 2). Many languages are descended from Indo-European over 9,000 years ago. Some died off (p.32). Chapter 3 notes the differences. English has a simpler grammar (p.35). The author notes many facts about languages. Chapter 4 tells about the changes in west European languages. The end of Roman rule in Britain resulted in the decline of the Celts (p.49). Old English did not have the silent letters or phonetic inconsistencies of modern English spelling (p.51). Changes around 1500 led to "The most wildly unphonetic spellings of any language" (p.61).

English retains the richest vocabulary and diverse meanings of any language (Chapter 5). Words are created by error, adopted from other languages, arise from nowhere, by changed meanings, or by adding prefixes or suffixes (p.75). English is the only language with so many words spelled the same way but pronounced differently (Chapter 6). The varieties of sounds varies geographically (Chapter 7). Pronunciation can signify class or background (p.106). English can be a very difficult language to spell correctly (Chapter 8). The Norman Conquest affected spelling (p.124). The printing press brought uniform spelling but preserved inconsistencies (p.126). It is a good thing there was never any academy to control the English language (Chapter 9). Meanings shift and change in response to common usage (p.145). Dictionary definitions often fail to convey the nuances of English (p.150).

Chapter 10 discusses dictionaries. New words became part of the vocabulary (Chapter 11). [Bryson doesn't mention the effects of radio towards uniform speech (p.169).] American usage affects English usage (p.175). How many people in the world speak English (Chapter 12)? An international language can reduce business costs (p.188). [The justification for Esperanto (p.191)?] Chapter 13 explains the history behind place names and family names. Chapter 14 discusses "dirty words". Words once unacceptable are innocuous today (p.220). People play games with words (Chapter 15). Chapter 16 discusses the future of English in the US. What is causing "declining educational standard" (p.242)? Will British and American English become dissimilar (p.243)? Movies, television, books, magazines, record albums, etc. are influences that bind the countries together.

"The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way" is an entertaining tour of the merits and idiosyncrasies of humanity's most global language: English. Author Bill Bryson introduces the reader to the history, evolution, and variety of English with good humor and lots of examples. Spoken fluently by probably about 400 million people worldwide, not including speakers of English-based creoles, English is not the most-spoken language, but it is the most studied, emulated, and widely distributed, being an official language in 44 countries. As it has become "the lingua franca of business, science, education, politics, and pop culture", it's worth taking a look at how confusing and wonderful English really is.

Bryson writes mostly of British and American English, with occasional references to Australian and Canadian, but this book is written for an American audience. Although it does touch upon some different dialects, it does not address pidgins or creoles. It does explain what makes English simple -few inflected verbs and adjectives, few consonant clusters and tonal variations, no gender- and what makes it difficult -huge vocabulary and ridiculous spelling. No less fascinating than the discussions of English are Bryson's examples of the behavior of other languages for comparison, which give the characteristics of English some context and inspire interest in language in general.

After a history of English's 1000+ years and an explanation of how words enter into language, the book launches into English's endearing (ahem) eccentricities: the evolution of pronunciation, development of regional dialects, how (and why?) we manage (or not) to spell 40 sounds in 200 different ways, word meanings and dictionaries, and a lightweight chapter on the lack of authority on English grammar. Bryson concludes with some fun chapters on names, swear words, and word games. He's dismissive of attempts to restore/introduce phonetic spelling, but there are good arguments for doing so, and workable alphabets have been devised for this purpose.

"The Mother Tongue" does not go into a great deal of depth on its subjects but rather introduces the reader to the strengths and peculiarities of English. Though I think Bryson gets his main points across well, there are an unfortunate number of factual errors, particularly relating to other languages. Bryson seems to have taken a lot of information from popular books instead of consulting direct sources, such as linguists or foreign language scholars. Still, he is a good writer, and the casual reader cannot help but develop a new fascination and admiration for the English language. "The Mother Tongue" is a charming inducement to investigate its subjects in more depth. 3 1/2 stars.

I would have liked the option of giving 5 stars for the book and 1 star for Bryson's inclusion of not so subtle insults of The Right (e.g., Republicans, anyone voting for a person like Trump). Bryson writes like a person with a unique type of Tourette's Syndrome --- periodically he inserts an insult of anyone who doesn't follow his Leftist beliefs.

It has been said that English and American are two cultures divided by a common language. Here Bill Bryson, an American, gets to grips with that common language which through its extraordinary flexibility and the even more extraordinary willingness to welcome and absorb words and phrases from any of the world's five thousand-odd languages and dialects, has become the lingua franca of business, science and technology, and communication. Any past predictions that the English spoken in the two countries will gradually diverge into two mutually incomprehensible tongues has well and truly been laid to rest with the advent of the Internet since Bryson's book was first published. Despite 4000 different words in general usage it is very unlikely that serious confusion or misunderstanding would arise in an exchange between somebody from Birmingham, West Midlands or Birmingham, Alabama. Of course, the differences between American and British English is not the principal subject discussed in this fast-paced, humorous homage to the most expansive of the world's languages, though in some ways it is one of the most important, given the prominent role of the United States in shaping world economy and culture. Bryson is particularly strong on debunking the myths surrounding so-called Americanisms and the vitriol directed towards American English by British commentators and statesmen over the years. In fact, most terms were in usage in the mother country in the past, had died out there, and then were reintroduced in recent times from America to where they had previously been carried by British immigrants (Shakespeare, for example, used `trash', a word today associated uniquely with America).
Mother Tongue begins with a brief overview of the world's languages and is followed by a (scientifically dated) chapter on how and when language arose in humans and by what means it spread across the globe. We then learn how English morphed from an obscure peasant's language spoken on an obscure island 1500 years ago to become a linguistic superpower. There follow chapters on the varieties of English, how it came to be (loosely) standardised, the English-American schism, English as a world language, and on spelling, names, swearing and word play. English is, of course, spoken, pronounced and spelt in a multitude of forms. These variations are tailor-made for Bryson's familiar method of subjecting the reader to a dazzling bombardment of curious and often hilarious facts, anecdotes and rumours, some well-documented, some dubious and some plainly apocryphal. This is the style of the book throughout. Mother Tongue does not claim to be a work of scholarship but is a populist account based on extensive research and delivered with schoolboyish enthusiasm. It is pitched at a level that makes a complicated and sometimes abstruse subject available to all. This to me is the purpose of populist works: to introduce people to a subject and to encourage them to develop their fascination further. It is then that they move on to study more academic works. Mother Tongue fulfils the same role for English language and linguistics that Bryson's own A Short History of Nearly Everything does for science. Both books are highly recommended introductory texts.

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.

I've never read Bryson before, so didn't know what to expect. His writing style is fun. Bryson packs a ton of fascinating information about the English language into very approachable chunks. It's a light read for those of us who like languages. Don't expect any grand proposals, just some really cool facts (some of which might not pan out to be true). Sometimes that much information starts to overwhelm but Bryson's humor brings you back you back in. I'll definitely read other things from him in the future.

"The Mother Toungue" by Bill Bryson is a book which I highly recommend to any bibliophile of trivia enthusiast (triviaphile?). For any person who ever had to learn to idiosyncrasies of the language, this book will provide a fascinating overview of the strange rules and nuances of English. If you think that learning English is not a big deal, try to define the word "what".

"The Mother Tongue"is divided into 16 distinct chapters. Each chapter can be read on its on and does not build on the previous chapter. Starting with "A Short History of Language" touches on how languages developed, and ending with "The Future of English" the book encompasses many subjects. Pronunciations, varieties, and spelling are all addressed as well as the good and the bad of the English language.

Mr. Bryson had the advantage of being an American journalist in England, so he takes into account the American English and English English varieties and the differences (some subtle, some not-so-much) between them. The first several chapters are a general introduction to English, how it has become the language we speak today and why it has been globally accepted. For obvious reasons these chapters move between what we know, what we think, and what we guess has happened over the course of several centuries.

The real meat of the book appears in the latter chapters where a large number of surprising facts appear (Shakespeare introduced 1,685 new words to the language) as well as how the definitions of words changed over time. Bill Bryce is also brave enough to tackle the bane of all English speaking people - spelling. Among many inconsistencies and illogicalities - as we all well know - the author also manages to make a case for the peculiar spelling of different words. It seemed to me that Bryson was also sympathetic to spelling reforms, which I am not against for certain words (enough...?) but feel that a great deal would be lost if we spelt words phonetically.

"The Mother Tongue" is not a history book in any sense of the word, but simply a collection of amusing and fascinating pieces of trivia grouped by topic (barley though). As a person that had to learn English as a second language, the curiosities of the structure and strangeness of spelling were always

While I did not find this book as laugh-out-loud amusing as Bryson's other books, I was still glad I read it. The book is a quick read and the reader can either read it straight through or jump around from chapter to chapter, or whatever picks one's interest. Bill Bryson's love of the English language shines through the book, even though it might seem a bit opinionated

"The Mother Tongue" is not a detailed history of the English language, but a light reading which is informative and interesting. The book is engaging, funny and full of lighthearted trivia.

I bought this book as an Audible book...and I LOVE Bill Bryson...but this was like reading a Turkish dictionary out loud to me. I'm sure it's fascinating and I tried, and tried but no can do. Thanks Audible for letting me return it but then I couldn't do a review. My friend the linquistic teacher couldn't get into it.

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.

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.

As other reviews have pointed out, Bryson appears to have little more than an amateur's understanding of the history of the English language and linguistics in general. This book is riddled with numerous factual errors and simplifications regarding the origins of words, as well as the grammatical properties of other languages. Most irritating, Bryson propagates the Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax (the idea that Inuits have hundreds of words for "snow"), which has been proven false time and again from linguistic experts.

A couple of the later chapters of this book are interesting and well-written, particularly the one about the historical hostility that British people have for American English. Here, Bryson provides multiple quotations and citations from the past to show the British enmity for American English.

But earlier chapters are repetitive and boring, as they read like endless word-lists. After multiple pages of reading factoids and funny-sounding English words, and clever-seeming wordplay, the reader gets tired.

For someone interested in language, or in the history of the English language, I recommend the better-written and factually-accurate books:

"The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker

"The Adventure of English" by Melvyn Bragg

A great introduction to the history of the English language, from the development of speech in humans to 1990. It is witty, funny, and interesting, chock-full of trivia and tid-bits. Some of the facts are dubious, this is not a well-footnoted research paper, but a fun primer; some of the facts are patently wrong, or rather folk-etymologies. Some things, oddly, are cited, with brackets and books, sometimes with a page number, sometimes not - it's just weird. And, I bought this book NEW at Barnes & Noble, it could stand some light updating and editing, as it is just odd to read of West Germany and the USSR. And a whole new chapter could be inserted on the rise of the internet and text messaging. All in all, however, it is a delightful read, and well worth the price if you can get it cheap. You'll learn about the wonderful vagaries of our bastard tongue. Nice bibliography.

One major complaint, and what keeps it from a full five-star rating: the King James Bible is mentioned, pretty much in passing, just twice. Twice. The best-selling book in the English language, whose verbiage still has an impact on our language, should get more than a mere mention.

As usual, Bryson turns in a thoroughly entertaining book: the man has a positive knack for taking even the most mundane of subjects and unearthing enough intriguing anecdotes and facts that it becomes thoroughly fascinating. But this time we might have too much of a good thing. As others have noted, some of the things Bryson claims in this book are perhaps too fascinating to be true. I don't know that much about linguistics, but even I could recognize some incorrect information in this book -- the "Eskimos have X number of words for snow" myth being the most prominent. Of course, one mistake does not ruin a book, but "Mother Tongue" is riddled with this type of thing. I challenge anyone to read the chapter on American English and tell me that Bryson isn't citing mostly archaic words in his claims about regional differences in the US. I showed the book to an Australian friend, and he said that the section on Australian English is also several generations out of date.

Yet for all that, there is still some good information here. It's a quick and interesting read, in spite of my misgivings about it. So go ahead and read it and have fun, but be warned not to believe everything Bryson claims.

I have listened to the audio version of this informative book. Unfortunately it is not narrated by Bill Bryson, and the book really suffers. I am constantly missing the note of irony that Bryson introduces into his own narration of his fine books. He should have narrated this one. I would gladly have awarded it five stars.

To me, The Mother Tongue (English & How it Got that Way), rates 4 stars simply because it is a very quick and funny read. Bill Bryson is better-known as a travel writer than a linguist because, logically enough, he is not a professional linguist. As many others in this forum have attested, you should not take this book as an example of up-to-date scholarship on the subject of the evolution of English or any other language. And I don't think Bryson intended it to be taken that way. If Bryson is a bit of an overenthusiastic fan of English and language in general, that does not mean that you cannot profit from this work and I think you would have to be a rather narrow-minded purist to find it unenjoyable.
The book is less of a history of English than a hodge-podge of interesting and sometimes funny facts and anecdotes about various elements of English and wordplay in it. He addresses the prevalence of English around the world and how it is changed by each culture to address their own needs, some theories on how language began, the infinite and provincial varieties of the pronunciation of English and some other languages, the institution of standardized spelling, the differences between American and King's English, the history of cataloguing words, swearing, and word-games.
He misses some good anecdotes along the way, such as President Andrew Jackson's line "What kind of moron can think of only one way to spell a word." (more or less) and, contra Bryson, I think the closest America has come to the clerihew is the double dactyl invented by John Hollander and Anthony Hecht, as in:
"Higgeldy-piggeldy,
Benjamin Harrison,
Twenty-third president,
Was, and, as such,
Served between Clevelands, and
Save for this trivial
Idiosyncracy,
Didn't do much."
But on the whole, I learned quite a bit, like that the court language in London was a provincial French, which had many differences from the Parisian French which modern French descends from. Logical though it seems upon reflection, I had never noticed that Chinese, having a non-phonetic alphabet, has no simple way to order their dictionaries. This also means that they don't have the pleasure of crossword puzzles although they have word games we could never replicate in English. I had never considered that there was any possibility to try and intelligently guess at how languages were pronounced before audio recordings. Bryson tells us how the professionals go about making those guesses -- and it doesn't seem as unreasonable as I had previously thought.
On the other hand, there are some factual errors you should be aware of. These include the lack of thesauri in other languages (I believe they were invented in English and writers in other languages don't make much use of them, but all the same), the myth that the Eskimos have 50 words for snow, that Finnish has no swear words, and you might take a look at the other reviews in this forum to check for other errors that Bryson makes or repeats. I would add that although Bryson points out that languages without phonetic alphabets have no ways of ordering dictionaries, he includes Japanese as such a language, although he later notes that Japanese has an ancient phonetic alphabet, kanji. Well, this leaves you wondering whether they had alphabetic dictionaries or thesauri earlier and, if not, when and why, exactly, were they introduced?
These shortcomings notwithstanding, The Mother Tongue is a very fun book and I believe non-specialists would profit handsomely from giving it a read -- I certainly feel as if I have.

This is a fun book.
Author Bill Bryson is best known for his travelogues. This book is an eclectic survey of the English language: its origins, evolution, borrowings from other languages, pronunciation and more. Through the book, Bryson's trademark humor is present. Although this book has less laughs per page than "A Walk in the Woods," it features Bryson's wonderful wit and leaves out the sarcasm that made some of his earlier efforts less than par.
Bryson clearly loves and respects the power of English. Perhaps alone among major languages, English developed without official sanction in the fields and streets of early medieval England, where the court spoke Norman French. Looked down upon, it was free to flourish and find expression for how most people really lived their lives.
This lack of officialdom during its birth and early rearing left us with wacky spelling and a few other eccentricities. But it also greatly simplified the language by, for example, eliminating the masculine and feminine articles inherent in French and the large number of verb forms associated with other descendents of Latin.
It also picked up more words and thus maintains a larger vocabulary than its European rivals, according to the author. This has given English the ability to richly texture speech and writings and provide a sublime ability to distinguish expression and thought more so than one is able to do in many other languages.
This is not a textbook, although it does pack a lot of serious information and linguistic discussions of the technical aspects of language. In a few chapters, Bryson relies too much on long lists to show his examples. This wears only a little and is buffeted by his humor throughout. Particularly interesting and enjoyable are his discourses on swearing, word games and improbable place names (like Maggies' Nipples, a town in Wyoming and Coldass Creek, located in North Carolina).
This book is very enjoyable and informative.

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.

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.

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.

Bill Bryson is always a fun read, witty dry and full of detail. This book is old so maybe that is why some of the references are off and obviously the stats are dated. Interesting quick survey of all kinds of things about English spelling, words games, names, etc

Bill Bryson's "The Mother Tongue" is a delightful read suitable for any language enthusiast. While several readers have singled out the (apparently copious) errors in the book, I myself read it for its entertainment value only, and was not troubled by these technicalities. Though by no means a scholarly text, Bryson's book provides readers with a wealth of information and trivia; in less than 250 pages he touches on everything from dialects to dictionaries, crosswords to curse words. Each of the sixteen chapters is closely focused on a subject related to the use, history, or development of the English language (both in England and other English-speaking countries), and can be read (and judged) on its own merits. Likely written in the late 1980s, and published in 1990, some of Bryson's "modern" examples are a bit dated. However, most of his illustrations are historical in nature, which will allow several generations of readers to follow along with the same level of comprehension. Who knew that a book on spelling and grammar could be so entertaining?

`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.

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).

I enjoyed reading this book a lot. The subject is interesting, and Bryson is a fine writer. That being said, the book really is just a long ramble. I couldn't tell you exactly what Bryson was trying to say about English, what his premise was or where he was trying to go. The book is basically a loose collection of anecdotes and fun-facts about English, with some about other languages thrown in for the purpose of contrast. I also know for a fact that some of his factual assertions are flat wrong. Now on the whole I didn't care, because I enjoyed the book with all its flaws. I feel obligated, however, to take off one star for the book's aimlessness and another star for the factual errors. That leaves three stars. I still recommend buying the book because it's a fun read. If you like Bryson's writing -and it's hard not to- then buy and enjoy this.

Tackling the entire English language in a 250 page book is a pretty ambitious task, but then of course, Bryson was just warming up before taking on the history of everything. And since Bryson is not a professional linguist, you have to wonder if he's really up to it. And as previous reviewers have pointed up, the book has inaccuracies.

I didn't care. It's certainly entertaining to read and informative. Bryson's got most of it right, and he presents an interesting story of how the English language got to where is it today. Some of it is fascinating.

Bryson comes across as a dinner guest who knows a somewhat less than he thinks he knows, but is clever and witty enough that no one really cares. It's fun, interesting and informative enough to hear him talk, so I can forgive him if he gets it wrong sometimes. I'm not a linguist, and you probably aren't one either.

Although the book has some entertaining segments, the severity of the errors in it makes me wonder just what the author considers research. The chapter on swearing claims that Finnish has no swearwords, and that Finns have therefore chosen the word "ravintolassa", meaning "in the restaurant", for use as an obscenity. This is utterly ridiculous. A professional should have kept in mind that native speakers of the less widespread languages of the world enjoy comic relief by teaching foreigners nonsense words as swearwords, and obscene phrases as confessions of love. Even as a second-language speaker of English, I found flaws in his depictions of dialects, flaws which many reviewers have cited before me. The author seems to have researched his book with a beer in hand, never bothering to double-check any of his information. If viewed as fiction, this book has its moments. Fact it is not.

Am I the only person who is amazed at the range and gravity of errors that diligent reviewers have discovered in this book? Inuit snow (they don't have fifty words for it); Finnish swearing (they do); Japanese orthography (I didn't get that one) ... the list goes on. I'll tell you a real shocker: I knew a journalist, a graduate in English, who thought that the language he majored in and professed to write descended largely from Welsh (certain Celtic and Latin dialects spoken in Britain at the end of the Roman Empire). If that doesn't strike you as risible, you need to read this book. This is not a work of high scholarship but it isn't dumb (or dumm). It's a popular account by an enthusiastic amateur, written with his usual brio, and if it persuades more people to take an interest in their mother tongue, or, at a pinch, their native language, good on it and about time.

If you want the full story, study Baugh & Cable's 'History of the English Language' and references there. Bryson's book is more fun, though. I recommend it along with Simeon Potter's 'Our Language', which covers much the same ground but without the swear words.

I can pick nits too. In chapter 6 he gets the High German Sound-Shift back to front. In his version, 'water' ought to appear as 'wasser' in Dutch, Frisian and Plattdeutsch (this may be his Wasserloo). Also, he has a tendency to refer to the group in question, including English, as 'north Germanic', which is a big no-no to us nerds. Bottom line: read Potter as well.

Perhaps riddled with error and contradictions in logic, Bryson's book nonetheless is an amiable romp through the history of the English language for we (us?) non-philologists (philolophobes?). Bryson is first and foremost a humorist, a social commentator, and his work should be read as a the work of a dilettante. He ain't no professer of linguistiks!
Bryson does do an admirable job of introducing all the pit-and pratfalls associated with the language, and I, for one, was absolutely stunned by the swiftness and extent of change that occurs constantly in our English, as portrayed by the author. I laughed at some - not many - of his jokes. Ultimately, it's not the humor that's this book's strong point, it's the protagonist, the hero of this drama, the English language that steals the show. Bryson is the carnie, the man who calls out to us and troops us by the freaks and geeks - the oddities of spelling and grammar, perhaps? - and we walk about the chaotic, disorganized spectacle, taking it all in.
So if you're curious about English, check out this book. If you're looking for strong research material, move along!

Mother Tongue contains so much information that you have to read it slowly or you'll miss most of it. Despite its relatively short length, a very large range of topics are covered, and while none of them are covered in the sort of depth that a scholar of the language would desire, the coverage is just the right amount so that no chapter becomes tedious.
There may be some minor errors here, or some possibly inaccurate generalizations, but on the whole, I think that Bryson has done his research, and since he lists sources, the reader is free to verify anything they disagree with.
Some reviewers have called this a funny book. While it is highly enjoyable, and amusing in places, it is not the sort of book that will have you laughing out loud. I think this is a good thing, since it indicates that Bryson is not trying to score cheap laughs at the expense of the language (he does in fact do this on the odd occasion, but when he does, it's well deserved).
This book has taught me more about the English language than all of my years of schooling, and I think that this book should be read by everyone, but students in particular will probably save themselves a lot of grief by reading this. I would be curious to see what people who speak English as a second language think of this book, since I believe it would be quite helpful to them.

This book consists of a series of essays about various aspects of English. On the whole, the book is well-balanced between describing British and North American varieties of English. The writing style is quite fluid and the book is, for the most part, very enjoyable to read. However, Bryson was not always careful about the quality of his scholarship; he often gets his facts confused or repeats "factoids" that are known to be false. On page 14, for instance, he makes reference to the old Eskimo snow vocabulary myth, claiming that Eskimos have 50 words for snow (see The Great Eskimo Snow Hoax for a more accurate account). On p. 107 he manages to associate the Martha's Vineyard pronunciation research with Trudgill instead of Labov. Since he makes so many errors, a reader can't tell for certain whether the remaining material is trustworthy. Readers of this book may find themselves more misinformed than informed.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book - I enjoy all of this author's books - even when I read things that contradicted my understanding of English - and language in general. I was disappointed to learn that there are so many errors but, nonetheless, for an enjoyable read, a basic insight into language and introductions to grammar, words that fail to become common, word games, etc., it is still a book worth getting (I was given it as a gift). Read it, enjoy it but do not take it as gospel.

This is a romp through a bunch of semi-related facts about English. It's mildly interesting but there is no intention of helping the reader understand why any of the curious language developments touched upon happened. If you're interested in the development and dynamics of English, I recommend the courses by The Great Courses/Teaching Company on this topic.

Interesting book but as other reviewers have noted, there are many points in which I question the research. That said, I did enjoy learning about the history of the English language and the many twists and turns language has taken over the centuries. The decline and disappearance of so many languages, including Manx, the language of my ancestors, is documented, reminding us of the fragility of the spoken and written word. Amusing and entertaining.

It's unfortunate that the 1-star negative review got triple posted, messing with the rating of this book because this is a great little book. This book is an incredibly fun read and does not take itself too seriously. If you want to read a book about the English language, and you don't want one that is too scholarly, this is it.

There are plenty of really scholarly works out there - and many of them are pretty much unreadable. And in fact, one of the things this book points out repeatedly is how various theories come in and out of fashion. In linguistics, it seems a lot of the oral history of our words are based off of ideas that are kinda hard to prove. I have no doubt there are mistakes in the book some of which the angry reviewer has noted, but I believe that Mr. Bryson has most likely tried to be as accurate at possible.

Instead of trying to write a definitive work, I think Bill Bryson set out to write a mirror for us to have a laugh at ourselves and our wonderful language. He's not a linguist - but he's not a hack either. He is exploring this language and seeing how it stands in this world - among other languages and in its point in history (1989) relative to its lengthy past. And his exploration is extremely well written even if maybe there are mistakes here and there.

I find the book a great read. If you're gonna write a dissertation or looking for a definitive work (or a book that takes Esperanto seriously), this isn't it. But if you want to have an enjoyable read chuckling at our idiosyncrasies and learning a little bit more at how we got here, I think you'll have a great time!

Bill Bryson, better known for his travelogues, writes a fascinating (and not-quite-correct) introduction to English etymology. Besides exploring the origins of the language, it also traces the varieties of English.
His explorations of American and British slang are the most complete and correct. When straying further than those, however, he misses the mark. His grasp of Australian grammar and slang shows that he's been there (which is certainly better than others who have commented on it), but only as a tourist. Live there, and you'll find a very different linguistic Australia.
Like Bryson's travel writing, this book isn't so much a cohesive piece of writing as it is a series of well-written anecdotes. There are some places where the continuity is somewhat lacking. However, this didn't particularly annoy me.
This is a great light-hearted read. It's certainly not a scholarly work, and doesn't attempt to be. I won't nit-pick its accuracy, since I don't think that's fair here. It's a good jumping-off point for learning more about this muddled language.

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.

An interesting romp through the English language, exploring its origins, nuances and ideosyncracies.

Accessible and informative, but lacking Bryson’s trademark wry wit as it leans towards the academic.

A worthwhile read.

Bill Bryson has made his name primarily as a travel writer, but has branched out in various ways (writing, science, etc.). In this breezy and fun book, Bryson takes us on a journey through the language of English, both geographically (England, America, Australia) and through time (from the earliest British Celts to modern times). It is undoubtedly a fun and enlightening book, looking into the origins of words, sentence structure, spelling, that make up the modern tongue we call "English". In reality, of course, English is a related series of dialects, and someone from Scotland might be incomprehensible to someone from Louisiana, or Newfoundland, or Tasmania, even though they are all putatively speaking "English". (I don't mean to pick on people from any of those places - my wife has trouble understanding the regional dialect from my hometown, and has no trouble with the deep south Louisiana spoken by a colleague that I find incomprehensible.)

Bryson divides his book up into thematic sections like those I've listed above (spelling, grammar, word origins, etc.). I found the historical sections to be the most interesting and entertaining to read, as well as discussion on regional differences. Most enlightening are probably the lists of "regional" words he sometimes includes (e.g British words that the reader would have to "match up" with the American version, e.g. lorry to truck). It's also entertaining to consider slang words with different meanings in different countries (e.g. "pissed" is "angry" in America but "drunk" in Britain). He makes full use of the humourous misunderstandings that can arise in such cross-cultural situations.

Of course, many of the irregularities in English arise because it is a polyglot language, with Celtic, Norman French, Latin, Gaellic (Scottish and Irish), Welsh, Anglo-Saxon, and Viking languages all being mixed together. Add to this the fact that (unlike for French) there is no central English-language authority, and you get the bizarre situations where the letter group "ough" can be pronounced "oh" (in though), oo (in through), uff (in tough), and o (short o, in thought). Similarly, a well-known swear word beginning with "f" has such versatility that it can be used as an adverb, adjective, verb, and noun in the same sentence, e.g. "He ****ing left me for some ****ing woman he's been ****ing, the ****er." (If the store will let me get away with such an example....)

Overall, this is an enjoyable read, and one where you'll often be surprised at things you've taken for granted but, on hindsight, really don't make a lot of sense. Similarly, it's easy to pick up and put down because of its modular nature, perfect as a coffee-table book. There are a couple issues that knock it down from 5 stars to 4 stars, mainly because it tends to rely too heavily on examples, which leads to narrative boredom after a while. He also tends to overemphasize certain points, where he tries to convince the reader that something is absurd, but chooses a bad example. At the risk of making the same mistake as Bryson, a couple of examples are, 1. More than once he mentions that "impede" is a common word but "the equally useful expede" has fallen out of use, apparently ignoring terms like "expedited shipping" or the travel website "Expedia"; 2. He points out that the same ending is used for multiple types of structure in a sentence, and concludes that sentence parts are artificial - but different verb tenses having the same ending does not make them the same tense! 3. One theory on the origin of the dollar sign is that it's a P and S superimposed (from peso), "even though it looks nothing like a P and an S" ... but $ looks exactly like a P and S superimposed. Perhaps that's being nitpicky - I enjoyed the book a lot, and picked up lots of interesting party trivia and learned a lot in spite of how much I enjoyed the reading.

Absolutely one of the most enjoyable non-fiction books I've ever read. Most reviews are very positive. I am sorry to see that some reviewers focus more on some mistakes than they do on his overall vision and execution of a marvelous read. Forest for the trees, fellas, forest for the trees. I think they miss that he is an entertaining consolidator and popularizer writing about a specific subject. He is one of the few writers who sometimes makes me laugh out loud or smile for the joy of his work. I'm sure that the type of people who are interested in this type of book can read critically and will forgive the mistakes, nor mistake him for a scholar. I find mistakes in almost everyone I read. So?

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.

I noticed a disturbing and rather strange error in the chapter on swearing. It may have been changed in the recent edition, but in the edition I read it was rather a fly in the ointment for me, although the book was, for the most part, quite an entertaining if not a very serious discourse on the English language. "Ravintolassa" is most certainly not a swear word in Finnish and means nothing more than "in the restaurant." Incidentally, Finnish does contain many real swear words and does not resort to such outlandish concoctions of words as Bryson suggests.

I'm a fan of Bill Bryson. "Walk in the Woods" and "The History Of Almost Everything" are 2 books I recommend to friends and family.
I'm facintated by the subject of languages and how they develop and evolve. Some chapters were very interesting, others became bogged down in too many linguistic technicalities for me and I resorted to skimming or even skipping to get through them. Others with more knowlege than I, have commented on the errors and misstatements by the author. After reading those reviews, I'm sorry I spent time trying to absorb many of his explanations, observations and factoids. There may be other books, with equal credibility but more readability on the subject.

I enjoyed this book. Bryson really does a nice job of tracing the history of the English and other languages. I really learned a ton in the book about the over development of western European languages. In writing this book, Bryson effectively weaved in concepts that make the book entertaining while adding some academic value. I would recommend reading it.

Bill Bryson is one of my all-time favorite authors, and as usual, he hits it out of the park for me. I love language, and Bryson's loving treatise shows he loves the language, but is not afraid of poking fun at its quirks, idiosyncrasies, and outright insanity. A great book for the language lover on your list.

I owned this book for many years before I read another Bryson book... It was a book I loved the first time I read it and every time thereafter. I never paid attention to the name of the author, at first, and, for some inexplicable reason, had always had some vague the author was a woman. Many years after acquiring the book I was lent a copy of A Short History of Nearly Everything (which I ended up reading in one night). Afterwards, I made a note of the author's name (intending to buy more of his/her works) and realized that the writer of this highly enjoyable book was the creator of the 'Mother Tongue'.

I realize this book has been roundly criticized for numerous factual errors and I would prefer to know that some areas had been better researched. However, that being said, if you want an erudite scholarly work you will generally end up with something that reads like an erudite, scholarly work... this book is a light-hearted romp and I don't think Mr Bryson has ever pretended it was otherwise. He makes me laugh with many of his turns of phrase... I can always go check facts against other works if the need arises.

C.J. Thompson

You know who you are. You savor the words "onomatopoeia" and "clerihew," a well written thesaurus is as good to you as any bestseller, and your copy of the OED is so well used that even the pages for the letter X are beginning to wear. You, friends, are the word people. Your love of the English language should be (if it already isn't) legendary, and Bill Bryson applauds such interest in his book "The Mother Tongue." He takes you through the ins and outs of our native language, from its Celtic beginnings through the Norman conquest and the Americanization of the world. While certain facts seem a bit out of place, and others seem downright weird, the feel of this book is what is its main attraction. This book is a portable copy of that doddery old English professor who made the language come to life for you in college, or perhaps the fresh-faced teacher you had in high school. Its informal tone lets you recognize, but forgive, its mistakes, and allows you to immerse yourself in one of the best of things: English.

I'm an inveterate word lover, so learning some interesting background on English made The Mother Tongue an obvious reading choice. Add to that, my devotion to Bill Bryson books, and it was a match made in book heaven.
Still, like all assumed things, it wasn't a perfect arrangement - the first chapter began with some references that instantly dated the work - namely, the former Soviet Union, which was still very much in existence when this was written. It sort of put a damper on my enthusiasm. Still, I found plenty to keep me engrossed and the book never left my side once I began it.
Bryson does his research - this is clear in all his other works as well - but something that is as scholarly as the English language, needs a steadier hand with things that are open to interpretation. Personally, I enjoyed the random trivia and digressions, but that style may not appeal to all.
If you like Bryson, like languages, and have a good sense of humor, The Mother Tongue is a worthwhile read. I recommend it.

While browsing in the linguistics section at a London bookshop, I came across this book. I had never heard of Bryson before, but the description on the back sounded so interesting, I bought it. Having just finished the book, I can only wonder how I managed to miss this guy's stuff all my life. This book is a fascinating journey through the history of English, the varieties of English in the world, spelling, pronunciation, and more. Bryson's style is fresh, funny, irreverent, and absorbing. I feel like I have found someone who loves nuance in language as much as I do, and is spot on when it comes to examining exactly the subtleties that get me fired up. Highly recommended to Anglophones interested in learning more about the language we call our own.

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.

An interesting romp through the English language, exploring its origins, nuances and ideosyncracies.

Accessible and informative, but lacking Bryson’s trademark wry wit as it leans towards the academic.

A worthwhile read.

Bill Bryson has made his name primarily as a travel writer, but has branched out in various ways (writing, science, etc.). In this breezy and fun book, Bryson takes us on a journey through the language of English, both geographically (England, America, Australia) and through time (from the earliest British Celts to modern times). It is undoubtedly a fun and enlightening book, looking into the origins of words, sentence structure, spelling, that make up the modern tongue we call "English". In reality, of course, English is a related series of dialects, and someone from Scotland might be incomprehensible to someone from Louisiana, or Newfoundland, or Tasmania, even though they are all putatively speaking "English". (I don't mean to pick on people from any of those places - my wife has trouble understanding the regional dialect from my hometown, and has no trouble with the deep south Louisiana spoken by a colleague that I find incomprehensible.)

Bryson divides his book up into thematic sections like those I've listed above (spelling, grammar, word origins, etc.). I found the historical sections to be the most interesting and entertaining to read, as well as discussion on regional differences. Most enlightening are probably the lists of "regional" words he sometimes includes (e.g British words that the reader would have to "match up" with the American version, e.g. lorry to truck). It's also entertaining to consider slang words with different meanings in different countries (e.g. "pissed" is "angry" in America but "drunk" in Britain). He makes full use of the humourous misunderstandings that can arise in such cross-cultural situations.

Of course, many of the irregularities in English arise because it is a polyglot language, with Celtic, Norman French, Latin, Gaellic (Scottish and Irish), Welsh, Anglo-Saxon, and Viking languages all being mixed together. Add to this the fact that (unlike for French) there is no central English-language authority, and you get the bizarre situations where the letter group "ough" can be pronounced "oh" (in though), oo (in through), uff (in tough), and o (short o, in thought). Similarly, a well-known swear word beginning with "f" has such versatility that it can be used as an adverb, adjective, verb, and noun in the same sentence, e.g. "He ****ing left me for some ****ing woman he's been ****ing, the ****er." (If the store will let me get away with such an example....)

Overall, this is an enjoyable read, and one where you'll often be surprised at things you've taken for granted but, on hindsight, really don't make a lot of sense. Similarly, it's easy to pick up and put down because of its modular nature, perfect as a coffee-table book. There are a couple issues that knock it down from 5 stars to 4 stars, mainly because it tends to rely too heavily on examples, which leads to narrative boredom after a while. He also tends to overemphasize certain points, where he tries to convince the reader that something is absurd, but chooses a bad example. At the risk of making the same mistake as Bryson, a couple of examples are, 1. More than once he mentions that "impede" is a common word but "the equally useful expede" has fallen out of use, apparently ignoring terms like "expedited shipping" or the travel website "Expedia"; 2. He points out that the same ending is used for multiple types of structure in a sentence, and concludes that sentence parts are artificial - but different verb tenses having the same ending does not make them the same tense! 3. One theory on the origin of the dollar sign is that it's a P and S superimposed (from peso), "even though it looks nothing like a P and an S" ... but $ looks exactly like a P and S superimposed. Perhaps that's being nitpicky - I enjoyed the book a lot, and picked up lots of interesting party trivia and learned a lot in spite of how much I enjoyed the reading.

Absolutely one of the most enjoyable non-fiction books I've ever read. Most reviews are very positive. I am sorry to see that some reviewers focus more on some mistakes than they do on his overall vision and execution of a marvelous read. Forest for the trees, fellas, forest for the trees. I think they miss that he is an entertaining consolidator and popularizer writing about a specific subject. He is one of the few writers who sometimes makes me laugh out loud or smile for the joy of his work. I'm sure that the type of people who are interested in this type of book can read critically and will forgive the mistakes, nor mistake him for a scholar. I find mistakes in almost everyone I read. So?

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.

I noticed a disturbing and rather strange error in the chapter on swearing. It may have been changed in the recent edition, but in the edition I read it was rather a fly in the ointment for me, although the book was, for the most part, quite an entertaining if not a very serious discourse on the English language. "Ravintolassa" is most certainly not a swear word in Finnish and means nothing more than "in the restaurant." Incidentally, Finnish does contain many real swear words and does not resort to such outlandish concoctions of words as Bryson suggests.

I'm a fan of Bill Bryson. "Walk in the Woods" and "The History Of Almost Everything" are 2 books I recommend to friends and family.
I'm facintated by the subject of languages and how they develop and evolve. Some chapters were very interesting, others became bogged down in too many linguistic technicalities for me and I resorted to skimming or even skipping to get through them. Others with more knowlege than I, have commented on the errors and misstatements by the author. After reading those reviews, I'm sorry I spent time trying to absorb many of his explanations, observations and factoids. There may be other books, with equal credibility but more readability on the subject.

I enjoyed this book. Bryson really does a nice job of tracing the history of the English and other languages. I really learned a ton in the book about the over development of western European languages. In writing this book, Bryson effectively weaved in concepts that make the book entertaining while adding some academic value. I would recommend reading it.

Bill Bryson is one of my all-time favorite authors, and as usual, he hits it out of the park for me. I love language, and Bryson's loving treatise shows he loves the language, but is not afraid of poking fun at its quirks, idiosyncrasies, and outright insanity. A great book for the language lover on your list.

I owned this book for many years before I read another Bryson book... It was a book I loved the first time I read it and every time thereafter. I never paid attention to the name of the author, at first, and, for some inexplicable reason, had always had some vague the author was a woman. Many years after acquiring the book I was lent a copy of A Short History of Nearly Everything (which I ended up reading in one night). Afterwards, I made a note of the author's name (intending to buy more of his/her works) and realized that the writer of this highly enjoyable book was the creator of the 'Mother Tongue'.

I realize this book has been roundly criticized for numerous factual errors and I would prefer to know that some areas had been better researched. However, that being said, if you want an erudite scholarly work you will generally end up with something that reads like an erudite, scholarly work... this book is a light-hearted romp and I don't think Mr Bryson has ever pretended it was otherwise. He makes me laugh with many of his turns of phrase... I can always go check facts against other works if the need arises.

C.J. Thompson

You know who you are. You savor the words "onomatopoeia" and "clerihew," a well written thesaurus is as good to you as any bestseller, and your copy of the OED is so well used that even the pages for the letter X are beginning to wear. You, friends, are the word people. Your love of the English language should be (if it already isn't) legendary, and Bill Bryson applauds such interest in his book "The Mother Tongue." He takes you through the ins and outs of our native language, from its Celtic beginnings through the Norman conquest and the Americanization of the world. While certain facts seem a bit out of place, and others seem downright weird, the feel of this book is what is its main attraction. This book is a portable copy of that doddery old English professor who made the language come to life for you in college, or perhaps the fresh-faced teacher you had in high school. Its informal tone lets you recognize, but forgive, its mistakes, and allows you to immerse yourself in one of the best of things: English.

I'm an inveterate word lover, so learning some interesting background on English made The Mother Tongue an obvious reading choice. Add to that, my devotion to Bill Bryson books, and it was a match made in book heaven.
Still, like all assumed things, it wasn't a perfect arrangement - the first chapter began with some references that instantly dated the work - namely, the former Soviet Union, which was still very much in existence when this was written. It sort of put a damper on my enthusiasm. Still, I found plenty to keep me engrossed and the book never left my side once I began it.
Bryson does his research - this is clear in all his other works as well - but something that is as scholarly as the English language, needs a steadier hand with things that are open to interpretation. Personally, I enjoyed the random trivia and digressions, but that style may not appeal to all.
If you like Bryson, like languages, and have a good sense of humor, The Mother Tongue is a worthwhile read. I recommend it.

While browsing in the linguistics section at a London bookshop, I came across this book. I had never heard of Bryson before, but the description on the back sounded so interesting, I bought it. Having just finished the book, I can only wonder how I managed to miss this guy's stuff all my life. This book is a fascinating journey through the history of English, the varieties of English in the world, spelling, pronunciation, and more. Bryson's style is fresh, funny, irreverent, and absorbing. I feel like I have found someone who loves nuance in language as much as I do, and is spot on when it comes to examining exactly the subtleties that get me fired up. Highly recommended to Anglophones interested in learning more about the language we call our own.

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 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.

This title is on the dry side of Bill Bryson's usual work. I found the subject generally interesting but parts were very dry. Read Bill's other titles first to get feel for his writing style to make this title more enjoyable.

This is an excellent book and it kept my attention for a long time. The most interesting part was the beginning when Bill explains how language began and evolved. It is fascinating. His research went over the top. I also enjoyed the information about Welsh, Gaelic, and Icelandic languages which often leave me befuddled. However, it got to be a little tedious as the explanations went further in how certain words we use are actually from various other languages. This would be a great book to require for any high school or college English class. I would have liked to discuss the topics with others and explore further how our regional dialects have evolved.

When Bill Bryson doesn't have anything else to do (yeah, right), he might want to consider issuing a revised edition of this entertaining but somewhat dated book. As he so ably points out, language is protean and much has changed in the last 15 years since he worked on this. In addition to new research and revelations that might correct or amend the text, there is the incomparable affect of the internet that has arisen since this book saw the light, not to mention the "business speak" that corporate culture has been slipping in of late.
That said, there is much to be gained by reading this book. Bryson's wonder and delight in the English language is contagious. While some of the historical information may be familiar at first, especially if you, like him, have read McCrum's THE STORY OF ENGLISH, his sorting out of the origins of our language and historical forces is quite lucid and thorough refresher course. What I especially appreciated was his look at how American and English usage and pronunciation diverged. I did not realize that the plummy "ah" sound that Americans identify so strongly with the British accent, as in glahss and cahn't, only came about in the 18th century, a social fashion that survived. I've come away with a better understanding of the role of how geographic movement and isolation affects language, as well as the very human need to name everything in site.
A note to recently indoctrinated Bryson fans: this was written rather early in his book career, in his English mode. Keep in mind that he only got better and funnier, though there is a sharp intelligence, graceful voice and sly wit behind every sentence of this book.

'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.

Bryson celebrates the mobility, diversity and endurance of the English language, and pretty well pours scorn on those over the years who have sought to regulate, direct, codify, analyse, latinise or otherwise control the thing that more people speak as a second language than as a 'mother tongue'.

The book is well written and gives quite a good number of laughs and original observations. Bryson is not strong on languages other than English and makes quite a few blunders, including his hilarious misunderstanding of the Japanese writing system.

Like most who have studied English, he is in awe of Shakespeare, and goes to some length to explain why. The book is pretty evenly balanced between UK and American english, but has only half a page on Aussie usage and no recognition of the Noi Zoiland contribution to the great lexicography. Sorry bros, sweet enough but not sweet as.

As many other reviews have noted, while this book is very interesting, it does have some questionable information. Having lived in the South mu whole life, I have never heard anyone refer to a "grocery bag" as a tote. A tote bag is a sack that one brings in to be filled and then take home, but his suggestion that New England calls it a "sack" doesn't seem right. Other than other questionable "setreotypes", I really enjoyed the books.

If you just read "A Walk In the Woods" and you're wanting to read more Bill Bryson, this one may throw you for a bit of a loop. Yes, it has some of his characteristic wit and even a bit of hilarity, but it also goes into thorough detail of English usage and origin. After some introductory chapters, the book begins to read more like a college text. Not that I wouldn't wish more textbooks would be written with the skill and clarity that Bryson brings to a subject obviously close to his heart. Don't expect "The Mother Tongue" to read like a travelogue.

I bought this book because I study languages and I thought perhaps Bryson would offer some insight into my own language. He did a lot more than that. Bryson is a gifted writer and he obviously knows how to research his topic. He carefully weaves the history of English into idiosyncracies about present-day English, while referencing other languages through the entire book. You can learn about dialects and creoles, about the origins of many common words, and ponder Bryson's theory about the future of American English, all in the same book. My mind was constantly filled with anecdotes, most of which are very helpful. This book is simply fascinating because its topic is something we use and experience every day-- English, our mother tongue.

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.

The critiques of "The Mother Tongue" on the store.com illustrate the Internet's great value. Left-wing carping that the Net has been coopted for commercial purposes is wrong. It misses the point that the Internet is the greatest research tool ever devised, and not just for commercial ends.
On page 46, the author of "The Mother Tongue" writes that Frisian, a close linguistic relative of English and Dutch, "has been so little altered by time that many [Frisians] can, according to [a] linguistic historian . . . , still read the medieval epic _Beowulf_ `almost at sight.' "
Knowing that old English, in which _Beowulf_ was written, is essentially foreign to modern English, I was skeptical that it could be that accessible to modern Frisian speakers. So I checked the Internet. Here, according to Catherine N. Ball of the Georgetown University linguistics department, is the Lord's Prayer in three versions: old English, apparently modern Frisian, and the 1611 King James version. (It seems that in old English the characters ð and þ were pronounced similarly to modern "th," both as in "thin" and in "that," and the digraph æ was pronounced like "a" as in "hat." I hope your computer shows these characters.)
[Old English]
Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum;
Si þin nama gehalgod
to becume þin rice
gewurþe ðin willa
on eorðan swa swa on heofonum.
urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg
and forgyf us ure gyltas
swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum
and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge
ac alys us of yfele soþlice.
[Frisian]
Us Heit yn 'e himel,
lit jo namme hillige wurde,
lit jo keninkryk komme,
Lit jo wil dien wurde
op ierde likegoed as yn 'e himel.
Jou ús hjoed ús deistich brea
en ferjou ús ús skulden
sa't wy ús skuldners ek ferjûn hawwe;
en lit ús net yn fersiking komme,
mar ferlos ús fan 'e kweade;
[want jowes is it keninkryk
en de krêft
en de hearlikheid
oant yn ivichheid. Amen.]
[The King James Bible, 1611]
Our father which art in heauen, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdome come. Thy will be done, in earth, as it is in heauen.
Giue vs this day our daily bread.
And forgiue vs our debts, as we forgiue our debters.
And lead vs not into temptation, but deliuer vs from euill: For thine is the kingdome, and the power, and the glory, for euer, Amen.
You can see they're all quite different, and only the third is readable to a modern English speaker. I doubt today's Frisian speakers would be able to read the old English text. Of course to wonder about such a minor point may seem pedantic if not obsessive, but if you write a book on the history of English you're going to attract the attention of language nuts like me.
To return to my initial point: Before the Internet's advent I would have been left with my doubts. The Web provides a means both to resolve them and to comment on, as well as to see others' criticisms of, "The Mother Tongue." Frankly, after reading the 55 comments posted before mine, I stopped reading the book because I felt I could no longer trust it sufficiently, entertaining though it is. I must say that part of me regrets putting it aside, and I don't want to urge others not to read it, for it is delightfully engaging, no matter what flaws it may contain.

This book is one of the best ways to get anyone to learn about the English language. The anecdotes and examples are very funny. However, they are often inaccurate. Eskimos (Inuits), for example, do not have 50 words for snow. They have two, namely, aput and qanik. The morphology of their language makes it possible to combine two distinct words to form another. Dirty+snow = dirtysnow and so on. Anyone who has any sort of background in linguistics should be on guard for such mistakes. The book IS amusing... but one should not, by any means, take it as canon.

If this book is supposed to be a foray into linguistics and English in particular, it's is doing a terrific job of completely misleading any laymen. Those who take his writing at face value will walk away with misconceptions, myths, and outright misinformation. Bryson demonstrates a profound ignorance of linguistics and languages in general, twisting research and facts to fit into his misguided view of the supposed superiority and uniqueness of the English language. This poorly-researched book carries the real danger of causing a great deal more harm than good to the general view on an academic discipline that is badly understood already.

While this book was highly informative and an interesting read, it took me a while to get through it (I had to read half of it, put it down while I read Bag of Bones, and read the other half after that). Bryson is very funny, and writes at a very high level (if you like Dennis Miller, you'll love Bryson). I learned a lot about how English ended up the way it is, and even learned about some geography and history of the world along the way. All in all, a good read.

I enjoyed this myself but I think the readership for this must mainly be people who are already interested in languages. It has rather a lot about such things as vowel shifts in English between fourteen hundred and fourteen fifty. To convert someone into a Bill Bryson addict I would turn them on with one of the travel books. One thing that carries over from his other books is the British/American comparison. He is a mine of information and insights about this. It's also the only language book I've read that fully covers the dirty words and cuss words.
I don't know how the experts feel about its accuracy. I note that he describes William Jones as English. His nationality is relevant because the fact that he was a Welsh speaker was one of the things that enabled him to recognize the relationships between the Indo-European languages. On that subject I take issue with Bryson's implied endorsement of the Economist's criticism of subsidizing Welsh. If you really want to eliminate useless relics of pre-Saxon Britain why not start with say Stonehenge. You could probably save the taxpayers millions of pounds. by bulldozing the place, putting a useful road through, and selling Salisbury Plain off to developers.
I don't know about the alleged thirty Inuit words for snow. I've seen that one debunked and confirmed. Maybe Inuit in Alaska have diffrent words from ones in East Greenland.

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.

I really enjoyed reading the book. Lots of great stories. I especially enjoyed the history of various attempts at spelling reform in the English language. This is a subject I have often considered myself. I agree with Bryson that comprehensive spelling reform is impossible. However, I think that limited spelling reform based on changing just a few words--perhaps some of the most commonly misspelled ones where a clear commonsense alternative exists--could work.

Bryson's criticism of the movement to make English the official language of the U.S. struck me as shallow and wrongheaded. He too easily dismisses as irrelevant the serious problems caused by conflicts over language in Canada, Belgium, and similar multilingual countries. We don't need such problems here, and I think anything we can do to prevent them is all to the good. Bilingual education is expensive, and it has been shown repeatedly to provide no benefits over the immersion method of teaching English to children.

This is a wide ranging book, covering the sources of language, the evolution and changes of the English language, English versus other languages, English as a world language and idiosyncracies of English spelling, pronunciation and names. The author, Bill Bryson, provides a large amount of detailed information in a format that flows. There is no overarching theme, so the book should mainly appeal to those who are generally curious about the English language.

"The Mother Tongue" is entertaining, but--like so many other books about language for the lay reader--it is filled with utter nonsense. For instance, Bill Bryson tells us that Japanese "hiragana" is a syllabic alphabet written above the main text as a guide on how to pronounce the "kanji" (Chinese characters) which form the main body of written Japanese. In fact, hiragana is used in conjunction with kanji, and its primary use is to to show conjugations of verbs and adjectives, as well as other aspects of Japanese grammar. The function which Bryson attributes to hiragana is, in fact, called "furigana" in Japanese. (In his "Acknoweledgments" page, the author thanks a certain "Doctor" from Osaka for his input regarding Japanese. This all leads me to wonder whether this pesonage may have been a doctor of podiatry, or perhaps a dentist!) One more example of the fiction in this book is Bryson's statement that "Pennsylvania Dutch is a kind of institutionalized broken English." He then goes on to quote some amusing examples of this "broken English." Whoever supplied Bryson with these tidbits about Pennsylvania Dutch must have been pulling his leg, as this language is actually a dialect of German--something that I already knew when I was in high school. I could go on, but I think my point is taken. Bryson's fabrications and/or mistakes about other languages undermines this reviewer's confidence that the author knows what he's talking about when he treats English itself.

What I mean is: if you've played "Boner"--the game where two competitors (typically students in school) must one-up each other in loudness of "Boner"-yelling until one is busted or gives up--well, you've got an idea of the breathless, sugar-addled goofiness this book exudes. Also, its organizational sophistication, respect for learning, and care for accuracy. If you've ever studied language, or even thought it about it for ten minutes or so in your car, you'll probably get a queasy feeling within a few pages.

This book is exceptionally rich pickin's when it comes to criticism, but here are a few of my favorite things that haven't been mentioned in the reviews yet (as far as I can see):

1) page 223 "[the word] 'Bollix' is commonly used in America to describe a confused situation..." Er, maybe not super commonly. Well, Bryson cites one newspaper article with it, so who's dumb NOW?

2) you want seamless organization? How about Chapter 1 "The World's Language," Chapter 3 "Global Language," and Chapter 12 "English as a World Language." I find myself wondering if at some point in the process Bryson and his editors actually tried to get 16 chapter titles that all meant the same thing, but then realized there was a college football game on TV and forgot.

3) on page 81, you get the amazing assertion that "in-, for example, almost always implies negation," a clause that itself (arguably) contains a word with a non-negational variant of the 'in-' prefix, one of dozens if not hundreds in the language. But the sentence is not finished (and I have elided nothing): "but not with 'invaluable,' while -less is equally negative, as a rule, but not with 'priceless.'" Except for the fact that dictionaries standardly define the first form as something along the lines of "NOT able to be valued," and the second form as "invaluable." So, although swimming in examples that confirm the straw-mannish irrelevance of the first observation, Bryson manages to come up with an example that FAILS to demonstrate what he wants, while inadvertently using one that does. Wow. We're in the hands of a master.

4) okay, one bonus thing. On page 66, Bryson gives us some difficult grammar forms, regular/irregular alternatives that regularly flummox users (i.e., make a... bollix?). You know, 'dived' vs. 'dove,' 'sneaked' vs. 'snuck,' 'hove' vs. 'heaved'... those kinds of things. Wait, what? Did he say 'hove'? Have you ever heard any human being say that? Hmm. Such an error in isolation might not stick in your craw, but the book is really chockablock with 'em. I think the copy editor just stopped looking at the example lists by the 60th page or so, because on page 69, you get this huge list of supposedly 'redundant' phrases using 'and,' and it just ends with what is clearly a note from the draft margins: " 'pots and pans,' 'cease and desist,' 'rack and ruin', 'without let or hindrance,' 'to all intents and purposes,' 'various different.' VARIOUS DIFFERENT? Did anyone read this before it got sent to the printer? And since when are pots and pans the same thing? I mean, if I tell you to get me a pot, and you bring me a pan, I'm not gonna be able to make my damn pasta. But forgive me for being redundant.

So listen, if you like playing 'boner,' and/or are primed to laff yer buns off at the fact that Chaucer and Browning used some really bad words, then this is the book for you. It may also claim that the word 'douchebag' appears twice in the King James Bible... I'm not sure, didn't really check... but the main thing is that writing is entertaining, right? BOOOOOOOOOOOOOONEERRRRRRR!!!!!

For my best friend and me, this book became our basis of conversation for more than a year. We decided to start referring to it as "the Good Book." This book gave me fervent enthusiasm for learning English and its history that is still strong six years later.

Apparently, however, several "facts" are wrong. So you should take it with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, most of the facts are correct. Besides this book is so fun to read, I still recommend it.

I also take issue with some of the critisisms. The comments about chauvinism are ridiculous. So what if he's a chauvinist! So you're warned he's a chauvinist. That doesn't count as a "factual error." Nor does it dent scholarship. Those who say that Bryson is an idiot for calling "inuits" eskimos are idiots themselves. Regardless of who may consider the word "incorrect" or "offensive," two facts remain: (1) Everyone knows what an Eskimo is, and (2) the word suits Bryson's personable writing style much better than the stuffy "inuit." Picking at this issue is pure pedantry.

Everything Bryson has written is perfect, but I recommend The Mother Tongue to the newcomer because it charms and endears from the first: "More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it seems, try to. It would be charitable to say the results are sometimes mixed." From this point, you know you are in the hands of a sharp, witty writer who will entertain you and learn ya' sumpin', too!

I enjoyed the humour and lightness of this book but I have read too many books on linguistics and, especially, the English language to be really informed by Mr Bryson's book. But having said that, the book is certainly not arduous to read. (My favourite books on language are the series Pelican Books published in the 1970s or 1980s - I remember especially 'Stylistics' by G Turner, but there were great books on phonetics, semantics, grammar, syntax etc etc - a fine indroduction to the study of language.)
The first half of Mr Bryson's book seemed to me to be well formed and had direction and inner logic that drove it along. But the latter half seems to be more of a grab-bag of bits and pieces (although I did enjoy the very last chapter on word games a lot). I was also disappointed at the emphasis on American English. Important though it is there are many other Englishes that ought to be considered. Unfortunately the small concessions to Australian English were often incorrect (for exasmple, Australians still call cookies 'biscuits' - although we may use the term cookie as well - we never call scones 'biscuits' as the American's do - this is certainly the mistake of an American perspective, not a British one!)

I would add my disappointment to the others and add that Bryson has no ear for accent and dialect and has apparently never really listened to American English and does not realize that there are American English speakers who can go to unfamiliar parts of the country and barely understand the local version of American English.

Very disappointing after other very good books by Bryson.