Mother Tongue: The Story of the English Language

by Bill Bryson

'More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to...'

Only Bill Bryson could make a book about the English language so entertaining. With his boundless enthusiasm and restless eye for the absurd, this is his astonishing tour of English. From its mongrel origins to its status as the world's most-spoken tongue; its apparent simplicity to its deceptive complexity; its vibrant swearing to its uncertain spelling and pronunciation, Bryson covers all this as well as the many curious eccentricities that make it as maddening to learn as it is flexible to use.

Bill Bryson's classic Mother Tongue is a highly readable and hilarious tale of how English came to be the world's language.

• ISBN13: 9780141040080
• Publish Date: 1 September 2009 (first published 1 January 1991)
• Publish Status: Unknown
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Imprint: William Morrow
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 269
• Language: English

Reviews

[funbreaker4opal]

It's a pretty informative look at the history of English while still being focused on humor.

[MurderByDeath]

I'm partial to Bill Bryson's writing to start with - I enjoy his subtle and not-so-subtle snark.  As an expat who often gets comments about her accent, word choice, or idiom use and is sometimes forced to defend the same, I've become interested in the English language across different cultures, so I was predisposed to really enjoy Mother Tongue.   

And I did.  The beginning was less-interesting, although I still learned a lot (as soon as anyone starts talking about invasions, my eyes tend to glaze a bit).  There were a few things he didn't get exactly right; times when he used specific examples of dialect or word choices that I knew from personal experience were not as sweeping as he made them sound.  For example: I grew up primarily in Florida but spent years in Georgia and travelling to family in South Carolina and never once did I hear the word "Ladybird" used instead of "Ladybug".  I didn't hear ladybird used until I moved to Australia.    

The last half of the book was easily more interesting as these chapters covered the differences between UK and American English, swearing and word games.  Bryson doesn't pull any punches in the section that outlines the word differences between UK and US - many of the words the US is credited for creating are in fact very old UK words that had fallen out of fashion (and memory) in England. The last half flew by and DH got an earful as I read passage after passage out loud.   I'd definitely recommend it for those that want a light overview of the history of the english language.

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

Recently I read ‘Made In America’ by Bill Bryson, so I thought it would be appropriate to read ‘Mother Tongue’ as well. Though there was a fair chunk of similar information in both books, ‘Mother Tongue’ is just more relevant. While ‘Made in America’ focused on the history of English in America; ’Mother Tongue’ focuses mainly on the history of English in general. Trying to cover questions like, “Why is there a ‘u’ in four and not in forty?” or “Why do we tell a lie and tell the truth?”

Bill Bryson does a great job of teaching and keeps the book interesting and sometimes humorous. Though the format and the style of the books are similar, I would recommend ‘Mother Tongue’ over ‘Made in America’ simply because the information is more relevant and covers all aspects of the English language.

Recommended for all English geeks, this book will give you a deeper understanding of the language as well as grammatical structures like amphibology. My wife might also be happy to hear that the book covers the topic of onomatopoeia.