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The Mother Tongue - English And How It Got That Way Paperback – October 23, 2001

by Bill Bryson (Author)

661 customer reviews

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With dazzling wit and astonishing insight, Bill Bryson—the acclaimed author of The Lost Continent—brilliantly explores the remarkable history, eccentricities, resilience and sheer fun of the English language. From the first descent of the larynx into the throat (why you can talk but your dog can't), to the fine lost art of swearing, Bryson tells the fascinating, often uproarious story of an inadequate, second-rate tongue of peasants that developed into one of the world's largest growth industries.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Who would have thought that a book about English would be so entertaining? Certainly not this grammar-allergic reviewer, but The Mother Tongue pulls it off admirably. Bill Bryson--a zealot--is the right man for the job. Who else could rhapsodize about "the colorless murmur of the schwa" with a straight face? It is his unflagging enthusiasm, seeping from between every sentence, that carries the book.

Bryson displays an encyclopedic knowledge of his topic, and this inevitably encourages a light tone; the more you know about a subject, the more absurd it becomes. No jokes are necessary, the facts do well enough by themselves, and Bryson supplies tens per page. As well as tossing off gems of fractured English (from a Japanese eraser: "This product will self-destruct in Mother Earth."), Bryson frequently takes time to compare the idiosyncratic tongue with other languages. Not only does this give a laugh (one word: Welsh), and always shed considerable light, it also makes the reader feel fortunate to speak English.

From Publishers Weekly

Bryson's blend of linguistic anecdotes and Anglo-Saxon cultural history proves entertaining but superficial. "While his historical review is thorough. . . he mostly reiterates conventional views about English's structural superiority," said PW. "He retells old tales with fresh verve . . . but becomes sloppy when matters of rhetoric and grammar arise."
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product details

Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reissue edition (1990)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0380715430
ISBN-13: 978-0380715435
Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.7 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 661 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,160 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #33 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Linguistics
- #160 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Essays
- #342 in Books > Reference > Words, Language & Grammar

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JGM

Not up to Bryson's standard

January 1, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I am a big Bill Bryson fan, I often say that the guy can write about anything and make it interesting. This book is an exception to that rule.

Although Amazon lists a 2015 publication date for the Kindle edition, this is clearly a much older book (most of the references and examples seem to be no more recent than the mid-80s) and seems to be one of Bryson's earliest publications. It lacks his usual superior scholarship combined with wit and clarity. I am not a linguistic expert as some reviewers here, but even I can detect that a lot of this is oversimplified, apocryphal, or simply wrong. Much of the book follows a pattern of making a statement about some foible of English followed by a long (often repetitive) list of examples. This does not really add up to either enlightenment or entertainment.

It would be a good subject for Bryson to revisit with a more rigorous and accurate approach.

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NOLAgal

Dishonest fluff

July 30, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I like Bryson's easy, breezy writing and love languages, so I expected to really enjoy this book and at first I did. I was dazzled by Bryson's erudition. Until I got to the one language that I know something about, Classical Chinese. In one paragraph, he slaughtered the truth. I'll give you just two examples. He said that people today could read the Chinese of 2,500 years ago. Not true. Contemporary and Classical Chinese are far more different than Latin and modern Italian, and that was true even before the Communists simplified the characters in the 60's. He also said that using a Chinese/English dictionary was a joke. After looking up a word by its radical (roughly, root), all of the thousands of entries for characters using that radical were just thrown in at random. Again, flatly untrue. They are entered in the order of the number of strokes used to write them. That still doesn't make it easy to find a word in a Chinese/English dictionary, but they aren't put together by clowns, either. In his bibliography, Bryson cites one work on Chinese, "Chinese for Beginners" by Dianne Wolff. I have been such a fan of Bryson's that I dared to hope that the mistakes were hers, so I ordered the book. Alas, her work is completely accurate. Bryson, either because he couldn't be bothered to actually read her book or just because he thought it was more entertaining his way, is totally responsible for his false statements. I do recognize that Classical Chinese is an obscure language, and who cares, right? But if he could be completely, 100 percent wrong about one language, what's to give us confidence he's right about any of them? I'm not saying he's dishonest, but I am saying I wouldn't set out on a walking tour of England using "The Road to Little Dribbling" as a guide unless I were comfortable with the risk I'd find myself walking through, say, Albania instead.

Comment 8 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

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Eric

This book is full of fun facts about English but also really does examine the ...

April 24, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I was in a debate with my wife's 92 year old grandfather about how silly English is as a language and that for non native speakers it is one of the hardest languages to learn. He, being a man who speaks many languages and was in the foreign service, said I was crazy. The next day a visitor to the house mentioned this very book when she heard about our disagreement.

I immediately purchased it and haven't regretted it once. This book is full of fun facts about English but also really does examine the ridiculous nature of the language from a linguistics point of view. That last part is surprising because he is not in fact a linguist!

It is light hearted fun but you will learn many things that you can impress your friends, or 92 year old grandfathers.

Comment 7 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

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Pete W.

Not So Hot or Is Just Me?

October 13, 2017

Format: Audio CDVerified Purchase

I am a BIG fan of Bryson's books, especially his travel monologues. Lots of fun and educational, too. As narrator he imparts a special touch. Unfortunately I am underwhelmed by his several works -- recent ones, I guess -- that he turns over to someone else to do the narration. The Mother Tongue is one of these and I stopped listening after three or so discs. I found the audiobook quite boring, just list after list of words under various categories (e.g., words which the English have borrowed untouched from the US vocabulary, etc.) Maybe this book does better as a book to be read than as an audiobook but this is the second book (can't recollect name of first one) which Bryson did not narrate which I found of much less interest than all the others.

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Janet K. Schwartzkopf

An Educational Book That's Actually Fun

April 17, 2018

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I loved this book. Not only is Mr. Bryson an amusing writer, but it's so full of interesting and entertaining facts that a topic which under other circumstances could have been quite dull turned out to be a page-turner. For years, I've heard about what an amazing language English is, and this lays it out in all its glory, from words we've borrowed from the Romans (not many) to when England could have adopted the French language thanks to the Normans, or that certain Anglo-Saxon words are still in common use today. I also wasn't aware that Shakespeare had coined more than 1,500 words on his own, that "okay" first appeared in print in 1837, or that certain members of the Founding generation thought a new country might need a new language. I'm quite certain my husband got tired of hearing about all the interesting things I learned, but I will never look at English in quite the same way again

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Most recent customer reviews

Sarah Boelter

Well done

My husband is thoroughly enjoying this book. I'm eager to read it myself.

Published 21 days ago

mkh

Three Stars

Fun read on the English language....but too many repetitive examples!

Published 24 days ago

Camden Gaspar

A Witty, Informative Account of how English Went From a Peasant's Tongue to a Global Language

This book is classic Bill Bryson in that there is a high measure of both wit and fact on almost every page.Read more

Published 26 days ago

Gail

Fun read while learning, too.

A good mix of history and linquistics == two of my favorite subjects.

Published 1 month ago

History Nut Hans

Laugh and learn simultaneously

Super absorbing read. Great sense of humor shines through.

Published 1 month ago

Kelcy A. Hahn

Error-ridden?

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.Read more

Published 1 month ago

JanoSanFran

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