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Bill Bryson

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The Mother Tongue - English And How It Got That Way Paperback – January 1, 1990

by Bill Bryson (Author)

2,837 ratings

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“Vastly informative and vastly entertaining…A scholarly and fascinating book.” —Los Angeles Times

With dazzling wit and astonishing insight, Bill Bryson 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.

Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publisher

William Morrow Paperbacks
Publication date

January 1, 1990
Dimensions

5.31 x 0.72 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0380715430
ISBN-13

978-0380715435
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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

Publisher ‏ : ‎ William Morrow Paperbacks; Reissue edition (January 1, 1990)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0380715430
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0380715435
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.3 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 0.72 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #33,500 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #30 in Linguistics Reference
- #104 in Travel Writing Reference
- #192 in Humor Essays (Books)

Customer Reviews:
2,837 ratings

About the author

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Bill Bryson

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Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa. For twenty years he lived in England, where he worked for the Times and the Independent, and wrote for most major British and American publications. His books include travel memoirs (Neither Here Nor There; The Lost Continent; Notes from a Small Island) and books on language (The Mother Tongue; Made in America). His account of his attempts to walk the Appalachian Trail, A Walk in the Woods, was a huge New York Times bestseller. He lives in Hanover, New Hampshire, with his wife and his four children.

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5 star		64%
4 star		22%
3 star		9%
2 star		3%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from the United States

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NOLAgal

Dishonest fluff

Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2017

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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.

259 people found this helpful

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Philip

Surprisingly sloppy

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2019

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I realize people love this guy, but he makes so many errors. Not just about English, but about most of the foreign languages he's using as comparators--it's pretty clear he is not multilingual. Some of the stuff is just cheap shots. And seriously, calling Tolkien the author of "the Hobbit trilogy"? Better just leave it out, if you can't remember "The Lord of the Rings." It's fine when Montaigne or Johnson get it wrong, or don't attribute; but this kind of thing is just plain sloppy. Lastly, the writing is so stuffed with adverbs and adjective. Where was the editor? This is a plague of modern popular writing. The book should have been half as long, and it would have been twice as good.

69 people found this helpful

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JGM

Not up to Bryson's standard

Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2017

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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.

101 people found this helpful

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Eric

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

Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2017

Verified 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.

34 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Ian Thomson

Not quite what I expected.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 7, 2019

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I bought this book as I'm a fan of Bill Bryson's writing and I find language an interesting subject. It's all about how English came to be the way it is and why it's one of the most used languages. Unfortunately, it's not about English English, but American English. The two are quite different, as is pointed out several times in the book. It seems obvious from the first few chapters that he wrote it for American readers- this is confirmed a little later in the text.
It's not a bad book, it contains his usual touches of humour (perhaps that should be 'humor'), and is very readable as one would expect- I just wish that, given the book's title, it was actually written about the English language and not the American language.

76 people found this helpful

S. Robinson

Not classic Bryson

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 14, 2019

Verified Purchase

I've been a fan of Bill Bryson over the years but this book is really disappointing. It's very tedious to read - hard work actually. And I was hugely disappointed by the anti-British undertones which made me feel uncomfortable and made him sound like a stereotypical arrogant American (which, I must add, has not been my experience f the many Americans I've worked with).
Not good; not enjoyable; dull.

43 people found this helpful

Georgios Mistriotis

Disappointed as the lack of proper research is evident!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 6, 2020

Verified Purchase

This is a big disappointment, as i am a fan of the author. But in thos book he fails to acknowledge basic aspects of the linguistic loans of the English language. Especially in the chapter of linguistic loans, he uses a plethora of greek words, used in the English language almost unchanged, but fails to even acknowledge the influence of this language on English. He even attributes grammatical loans as English inventions, such as the prefix a- as an indication of loss of the ability, a grammatical aspect used in Greek for milenia. Nevertheless, it is a very interesting read. But it definitely needed a better proof-reading.

24 people found this helpful

E Griffith

Tedious

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 17, 2019

Verified Purchase

I’ve enjoyed some of his previous books but this was poor. It rambled on and just did not capture my attention even though I’m interested in the subject. Some of it, the references to Welsh, were just incorrect, and this made me doubt the accuracy of some of the other “revelations” about the complexity of English. For those who expect Bryson to be funny, don’t bother, it’s not a funny book at all. I managed to finish it, but only just.

20 people found this helpful

Mr. Othniel Smith

Witty, learned, unreliable...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 16, 2019

Verified Purchase

A fascinating examination of language, with particular reference to English, its development and its apparently unlikely rise to world domination.

Scrupulously researched without being scholarly in tone, Bryson's text takes us from the earliest days of humankind, discussing, in witty style, the evolution of language, and the peculiarities of particular tongues and cultures. Each chapter has a different linguistic focus - pronunciation, grammar, spelling, swearing - featuring numerous examples, and building up a picture of a highly complex system of communication (or non-communication).

Since the early 1990s, when this book was first published, time has caught up with it somewhat; we know more about Homo Sapiens relations with the Neanderthals than we used to; and words such as "sick" have accrued new meanings. Also, given that certain assertions (e.g. about Welsh) are plainly inaccurate, I cannot vouch for some of the claims made about the idiosyncrasies within other languages.

Nevertheless, this is a highly entertaining read; a much-needed reminder of human ingenuity.

9 people found this helpful

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