The Mother Tongue,   ISBN:9780380715435

Customer Rating: 

Entertaining, interesting, fun -- and no editor shouold have let it out like this. The frequency of factual errors is stunning: dozens and dozens I've caught, and that's just a sampling. Other reviewers have listed a number of errors, so I won't recap. Read and enjoy - but you should treat it like Wikipedia: you shouldn't assume that anything in here is accurate without doublechecking elsewhere.

Customer Rating: 

First things first; if you're interested in reading this book, you need to know two things:

1) Bryson has a strong interest in the English language, but he is not a linguist. This is a book written by a layman for a general audience, not a linguistics paper.

2) As with all of Bryson's books, his primary motivation is telling a fun and interesting story. Strict historical accuracy is sometimes overlooked or distorted in the name of entertainment.

So how you view 'Mother Tongue' depends on how willing you are to accept the above two points. If you're after a genuine textbook history of English, then forget it. But if you want a very general overview of the language, its history, and its development (and are willing to accept some inaccuracies and exaggerations), 'Mother Tongue' is a good read.

The book is quite comprehensive. It traces English from its origins as a series of obscure Germanic dialects, through to its status as semi-official world language today. There are sections on the characteristics of regional varieties of English (most notably American English), spelling and pronunciation, and the development of dictionaries. More light-hearted sections revolve around Bad English, evolution of names, wordplay, even the etymology of swear words. One interesting point that Bryson repeatedly makes is how natural the development of English has been, compared to more regulated languages such as French. The argument is that the various quirks and subtleties in English have made it a much richer and more interesting language.

It is true that there are too many inaccuracies to ignore, and other reviewers more qualified than myself have made these clear below. Professional linguists will probably be outraged by the number of incorrect assertions here, although they probably wouldn't be reading a book like this anyway. Whether these are genuine mistakes or deliberate distortions is not clear. It is worth noting that Bryson sometimes uses qualifiers such as "reportedly...", "supposedly..." or "it is said that...", perhaps indicating that he knows some of these things are not true, but still wants to push them in the name of humour.

If nothing else, Bryson is a skilled writer, and he is able to make relatively dry subjects (history, geography, etymology) highly entertaining. I previously had zero interest in linguistics, but this book really sucked me in. No it's not perfect, but it does at least provide a solid introduction to the subject for the interested layperson.

Customer Rating: 

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.

Customer Rating: 

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.

Customer Rating: 

A thoroughly enjoyable and thought provoking look at derivations of words and implications for the English language. Has heaps of examples linked by interesting narrative and tends to be selective and readable rather than comprehensive and dull. A 15 year-old friend enjoyed it too.