The Mother Tongue (Paperback) by Bill Bryson - Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists

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50 Books A Year: Kathy's 2009 Book List	3	35	15 days ago, 08:16AM

Julie (jjmachshev) rated it:

07/16/08

bookshelves: 2008-reads

Read in July, 2008

recommended to Julie (jjmachshev) by: Eastofoz (and thanks!)
recommends it for: everybody

What a hilarious, fascinating, and educational look at our wacky, wonderful, and WAY complicated language. If English is your mother tongue, this book will amaze and amuse you with interesting tidbits about just how our language evolved into the wonder it is. If you had to learn English as a second language (and more power to you), then bless your heart for taking on the task. You will read this book, and say YES, absolutely, I always wondered..., etc. Bill Bryson turns his sharp-eyes to "...more

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Punk rated it:

06/23/07

bookshelves: non-fiction

Read in May, 2006

Non-fiction. Published in 1990, this book is already a little out of date. In its first pages, Bryson reports OED editor Robert Burchfield's theory that American English and British English are drifting apart so rapidly that within two hundred years we won't be able to understand each other. That was a theory made back when cell phones still required a battery the size of an unabridged dictionary, long before the internet became such a large part of the way the world communicates, in a time when...more Non-fiction. Published in 1990, this book is already a little out of date. In its first pages, Bryson reports OED editor Robert Burchfield's theory that American English and British English are drifting apart so rapidly that within two hundred years we won't be able to understand each other. That was a theory made back when cell phones still required a battery the size of an unabridged dictionary, long before the internet became such a large part of the way the world communicates, in a time when you couldn't imagine downloading a British Doctor Who or an American Stargate Atlantis to your iPod. We live in a new world! Unfortunately it's also a world where the Harry Potter books are "translated" for American readers, lest we be too confusion by the lingo: "What's this? Harry's eating a biscuit? And wearing a jumper? While battling Fizzolian Snargletoothed Whatsits?! This book is impenetrable!" JK Rowling aside, with communication technology becoming smaller, cheaper, and more powerful, I think we'll still be able to communicate two hundred years down the line. Bryson eventually disagrees with Burchfield for many of the same reasons, though he was unable to cite the internet as a factor.

In that way, this book is showing its age -- the chapter on online language use is, of course, conspicuously absent -- but it's got the history part down. Bryson spends most of his time looking at how we got where we are today. Where English came from, how it got to England, where it went from there. With its in-text references, footnotes, extensive bibliography and index, this book looks almost academic, but Bryson, an American living in England, handles it all with a cheerfully low-key sense of humor -- almost as if Terry Pratchett had turned his eye to grammar -- and even a refreshingly open approach to the word fuck in the chapter on swearing.

My one complaint is that, despite being loosely hung on British and American history, for the most part the book lacks a greater structure and ends up reading like a series of interesting facts. But, hell, they got my attention, and, as it happened, the attention of everyone around me: "Hey! Did you know the Romans had no word for grey?" Since English, as this book proves, is a big crazy mess, I guess Bryson can be excused for not being able to wrangle its history into a more pleasing order. Lack of structure aside, I really enjoyed reading this and will be reading more books by Bryson in the future....less

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Jill rated it:

09/03/08

Read in September, 2008

recommends it for: adela

I got this book from Madonna.

Loving every page of this book, as it really keeps rolling on and keeps getting more and more interesting.

However, I have to be fair to Steve who said something to the effect of "it was the same thing over and over again - every page: 'The English Language is f***ed up... blah blah blah... look how f***ed up the English Language is... blah blah blah... here's another example of how f***ed up English is, as a language... blah blah blah' et...more

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Garver rated it:

11/28/08

Read in November, 2008

Thanks to Oliver for putting this one up here. It's a great tour of the history of the English language, from its origins to its current diffusion as the de facto business language of the world. The story of English is told with Bryson's characteristic wit and mother tongue-in-cheek asides -- though the book is a bit outdated and contains some points now known to be apocryphal.

I prefer nonfiction that changes the way you put things in context, that gives you a new lens to vi...more

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Linda rated it:

05/24/08

bookshelves: language, non-fiction

Read in May, 2008

I found this history of English to be quite readable and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. While somewhat dated, it still has interesting information. I've read about the general history of English more than once, but I certainly wasn't bored reading Bryson's version. I especially appreciate this book for the chapters on names, swearing, and wordplay, and also about the use of English around the world, as these were topics that I haven't read much about in other books on English. That said, I ...more

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Jan rated it:

05/18/08

Read in May, 2008

A topic of interest written by one of my favourite authors - I was excited to find it on a bookshelf but in the end it took quite a long time to read. While reading this book it felt like Bryson deliberately got muddled and wallowed in the irregularities and complexities of language, so in a sense it wasn't as clear to read as A Short History of Nearly Everything. In some reviews of A Short History of Nearly Everything I read that some factual mistakes had crept into print as they have done ...more

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Corrielle rated it:

02/29/08

bookshelves: non-fiction

Read in February, 2008

I am an English teacher. I like grammar. It fascinates me. I like knowing big words and little words and word histories and word games. Being at a computer with access to the online version of the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) can provide me with endless hours of amusement. So, this book was a treat for me. Bill Bryson writes with an exuberance and excitement about what English (and language in general) is capable of that is infectious and uplifting. Though it is not a comprehensive hist...more I am an English teacher. I like grammar. It fascinates me. I like knowing big words and little words and word histories and word games. Being at a computer with access to the online version of the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) can provide me with endless hours of amusement. So, this book was a treat for me. Bill Bryson writes with an exuberance and excitement about what English (and language in general) is capable of that is infectious and uplifting. Though it is not a comprehensive history of the English tongue, it does drop in at key moment and point out some of the really interesting, weird, trivial tidbits. At the same time, he recognizes some of the strange idiosyncrasies of English that make it ridiculously difficult for non-native speakers to learn. Unlike other pieces on English I've read that are uncomfortably superior sounding, this one points out some of the places where other languages can easily express concepts that English speakers don't have precise words for. I also learned that a lot of the rules we hapless grammar teachers try to impart to our students have somewhat dubious origins. For instance, I learned that using a preposition at the end of a sentence, as I have just done a couple of sentences before, is only considered improper because a fellow who wrote an influential book on grammar in England decided HE thought it sounded common and ungraceful. I was also fascinated by all of the words that were once common in Britain that have fallen out of use there, are still in use here, and are now viewed as "Americanisms." In fact, the section on the "drift" between various English speaking countries was very neat. I knew a lot of the Brit-speak already (thank you, year in London and Age of Sail fandom...) but I really liked the argument that British English, Australian English, and American English aren't drifting apart as fast as they might because of the ease of communication and the media shared between the countries. It made a lot of sense to me.

Anyway, I found this to be a useful, witty, fun collection of facts and oddities concerning English....less

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Charity rated it:

04/28/08

bookshelves: 2008, booksfromlists, nonfiction

Read in April, 2008

Did you know that drumstick was coined in the 19th century because polite society could not bring itself to utter the word leg? Or that Shakespeare gave us no less than 1700 new words including barefaced, frugal, dwindle, and summit?

Bill Bryson, an American transplanted to England, traces the history of English on both sides of the Atlantic. He explains the evolutionary accident that altered the human larynx and enabled us to speak. He traces the origins of English's naughtiest words...more

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Jessica rated it:

01/31/08

bookshelves: read-in-2008

Read in January, 2008

Published: 1990

How I discovered: A Xmas present from Jamie, who is one of the world's biggest Bryson fans.

What I liked: Everything! It's deliciously entertaining for word-lovers. Bryson has a wealth of knowledge and does his research well, presenting it all with his witty sarcasm and dry humor. There are chapters on history, etymology, dialects, spelling, grammar, surnames, and even swearing.

What I didn't: I can't think of a single thing I didn't like.
...more

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David rated it:

12/21/07

bookshelves: historical, nonfiction

I first ran into Bryson in one of his travel books (A Walk in the Woods), and have read several other of his travelogues since (I'm A Stranger Here Myself, Notes from a Small Island, In a Sunburnt Country, and Neither Here Nor There). But while Bryson's travel writing is entertaining, I've found that I like his writing about other things even better. A Brief History of Nearly Everything was remarkably good, and I'm very fond of both Bryson's books about the English language: The Mother Tongue ...more

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Genevieve rated it:

07/25/08

Read in July, 2008

This is an engaging tour of the English language. Some passages made me laugh out loud, and I read it quickly, because so often I simply didn't want to put it down.

It's not a perfect book. Written in 1990, it's out-of-date already. For example, I wondered how many of the regionalisms that Bryson describes have diminished in the last 20 years. The numbers he gives (of native English speakers, for instance, or people studying Russian) are almost certainly wrong. And of course, he was ...more

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Cissy rated it:

06/03/08

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in January, 1997

The one thing that bothered me the most about this book was a huge error it had on swearwords, in reference to my mother tongue Finnish:

(p. 210, Ch. Swearing, in my Penguin paperback:) “Some cultures don’t swear at all. (…) The Finns, lacking the sort of words you need to describe your feelings when you stub your toe getting up to answer a phone at 2.00 a.m., rather oddly adopted the word “ravintolassa.” It means ‘in the restaurant.’"

I mean, what the h...more

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Kathryn rated it:

10/25/07

bookshelves: non-fiction

Read in October, 2007

Lots of interesting, amusing and charming histories of the "English" language (esp. its many mutations and assimilations). I especially enjoy the tidbits on British culture--the quirkiness of pronunciations and spellings, the long-winded names of nobility, and the imaginative names for pubs and towns! While I know some question the academic merit of this book, others promote it--I'm not a linguist, so I simply find it entertaining!

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Donna rated it:

12/06/08

bookshelves: non-fiction

Read in October, 2008

This is an exceptionally well-researched linguistic study of the English language. Bryson establishes himself as a dedicated (and fascinated) scholar who genuinely loves the various quirks that the English language has to offer.
Having recently read one of Bryson's travel books prior to reading this, I found it very interesting to see the academic rule over the humorous in this book (although there were, of course, many humorous asides throughout it), whereas in his travel literature it's ...more

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Jamie rated it:

08/12/08

Read in September, 2006

Another helping from the Bill Bryson smorgasboard. This book definitely has a different flavor to it, though, as it's about linguistics, philology, and all things language. This area has actually been a secret interest of mine, as I've always found it fascinating how we learn language, how languages change over time, and how they change across regions. It's one of the many great things about having a kid --you get to watch them learn to think and speak using language, and the natural, organic, a...more Another helping from the Bill Bryson smorgasboard. This book definitely has a different flavor to it, though, as it's about linguistics, philology, and all things language. This area has actually been a secret interest of mine, as I've always found it fascinating how we learn language, how languages change over time, and how they change across regions. It's one of the many great things about having a kid --you get to watch them learn to think and speak using language, and the natural, organic, and ultimately mysterious way that they go about it completely fascinates me.

Bryson goes into that a little bit, but the majority of the book focuses on the quirks of the English language and how it developed and emerged in its present form out of the mists of history. The point that I took from all this is just how absurd a language English is. Why is "know" spelled with a "k" at the beginning? Why is something "aural" or "urban" instead of "soundish" or "cityish"? What the heck does "spic and span" mean? Imagine if in mathematics 2 + 4 = 6, but 4 + 2 = 5, and 6 - 2 wasn't even possible. That's the level of absurdity we nonchalantly deal with every day, and and Bryson does a good job of making it apparent how weird that is.

Unfortunately this is not the caustic, witty, and consistently funny Bryson that I was used to from his travel diaries and collections of observational humor. It's not exactly textbook dry, but Mother Tongue does get bogged down in one (or two or five) too many examples and meandering blatherings about things that just aren't that interesting to anyone this side of a nameplate that says "Linguist" on it. It's not snappy, it doesn't make you smile that often, and I the only time I really laughed was the wide section of the book that Bryson spends tracing the etymology of the word "fuck." But I admit, that part was pretty funny, ironically thanks to the scholarly tone of most of it.

So this wasn't Bryson's most entertaining work, but it was perhaps his most educational. And I just like this kind of stuff, so any attempt to breathe any character into it was welcome....less

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Tessa rated it:

10/14/08

bookshelves: culture, history, language

Read in October, 2008

recommended to Tessa by: i actually can't recall
recommends it for: those interested in linguistics

I've had this book on the shelf since I left college, and even started it once only to lose my place and forget that I had it. I've read a few reviews of it throughout the course of reading it and notably it is frequently mentioned that the material is a bit dated. The book was originally published in 1990, and the edition I read was published in 2001.

What has happened to the English language since 1990 that was entirely not mentioned in the book was email, which has had a considerab...more I've had this book on the shelf since I left college, and even started it once only to lose my place and forget that I had it. I've read a few reviews of it throughout the course of reading it and notably it is frequently mentioned that the material is a bit dated. The book was originally published in 1990, and the edition I read was published in 2001.

What has happened to the English language since 1990 that was entirely not mentioned in the book was email, which has had a considerable effect on the written language in that from email was begotten instant messaging, net forums, and most regrettably, blogs.

Since the mid-nineties, a considerable number of new words and word definitions have been introduced including blog (and it's variations blogging, blogger, blogged, blogosphere (slang begets slang) and so forth.

Several words developed new alternative meanings: hybrid (in the sense of the vehicle), "hot" can now something that is cool, and "green" as related to environmental consciousness.

A lot of internet slang terms are coming into their own as acceptable words. email dropped the hyphen for ease of typing, acronyms such as LOL and ROFL (now acceptably lol and rofl) are sometimes actually pronounced ("lawl" and "roffle"). and even these changes can be dated to even the last five years. I'm having to make an effort to actually use capitalization (something I view as antiquated unless used for effect) in an effort to maintain distinction from formal review and every day stuff that I type. It's clearly been too long since college.

Can you expect to thoroughly cover that which is as ever-changing as the English language? In the internet age communication set to ludicrous speed. Bryson's work really distinguishes itself as a comprehensive history of the language in palpable format.

Bill Bryson is a funny guy, and the chapter on swearing is particularly amusing. Very fun to read and really a great way to review most of the material from the History of the English Language class I took my Junior year of college. I would however, like to see some of his thoughts on more recent developments like LOLspeak and the effect of auto-correct and spell-check on the development of language.
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Chris rated it:

04/19/08

bookshelves: history, language, top-shelf

Read in April, 2008

recommends it for: English teachers, English speakers

This is my second Bryson book for the year (the first being A Short History of Nearly Everything), but this is probably the fourth time I've read this book. I'm an English teacher, so my desire to know more about the language I'm teaching is, well, pretty high. One does not necessarily lead to the other, of course - I've met plenty of English teachers who couldn't care less about the history of the language, just how to teach it. Not that there's anything wrong with that....

Bryson ex...more This is my second Bryson book for the year (the first being A Short History of Nearly Everything), but this is probably the fourth time I've read this book. I'm an English teacher, so my desire to know more about the language I'm teaching is, well, pretty high. One does not necessarily lead to the other, of course - I've met plenty of English teachers who couldn't care less about the history of the language, just how to teach it. Not that there's anything wrong with that....

Bryson excels in many things, and one of his best talents is taking something horribly complex, like the rise of English as a dominant world language, and making it not only understandable, but entertaining. He takes us through, of course, where languages come from and how they've evolved over the last umpteen thousand years. With special emphasis on the evolution of English, of course, from a commoners' tongue composed of a mishmash of Anglo-Saxon and Norman, with regular infusions from the Romance languages and Scandinavia to the language of an Empire, spanning the globe and finding niches in the most unexpected of places. He talks about the origins of words pronunciation and how it's changed, and the multiplicity of English dialects. He covers the split of American and British English, and how half the time when the Brits get all snobby about an "Americanism," it's actually a word that was coined in Britain but fell out of favor. He covers the attempts to catalog English and standardize it, to simplify it and study it.

He even has a whole chapter on profanity.

So yeah, if you've every wondered where the language you're speaking comes from, check it out. It's rather unashamedly pro-English in terms of its comparison with other languages, as you might expect, but Bryson does his best to point out the occasions where other languages accomplish things that English cannot. You can't help but notice, however, that Bryson is an English speaker who loves the English language, so expect a bit of bias to seep in there.

Nonetheless, it's very entertaining and informative. Enjoy....less

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Jason rated it:

11/10/08

bookshelves: couldn-t-get-through-it

Read in November, 2008

knowing how much people enjoy Bill Bryson, and how interested i am in language in general, i figured this would be a perfect pick for me... Try as I might, however, I couldn't keep up the motivation to read this one.. I had this in my 'currently reading' section for so long, i finally realized i'm just not going finish it. an interesting fact or two is certainly found in practically every chapter (of those i did get through), but they're interspersed within an endless torrent of examples su...more

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JG rated it:

09/19/07

bookshelves: non-fiction, read_in_2007

Read in September, 2007

I checked this book out of my local library expecting to find it as funny as most of the other Bill Bryson books I've read. It wasn't funny at all.

It's exactly what the title says it is, a book about "English and how it got that way." Bryson's wit would flare up occasionally, but mostly it was buried under a lot of dry trivia about the evolution, spread, and adaptation of the English language. The only things I really retained were the fact that the longest word in the E...more

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Lani rated it:

08/13/07

bookshelves: non-fiction, own

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: linguists, bill bryson fans, english-speakers

Bill Bryson is really hit or miss for me. I appreciate his sense of humor, but I can't always dive right into his books. I also nearly failed my linguistics class, so this book didn't play to my strengths.

There are some slower chapters, but discussions of accents and swearing were pretty entertaining. It was also fun to discover just how arbitrary many grammar and spelling rules are.

As pointed out by other reviewers, the book feels quite out of date. Surveys and research ...more

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The Mother Tongue

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