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| Mother Tongue: The English Language | 
 enlarge | Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy Used: £2.55
You Save: £6.44 (72%)
New (38) from £3.72
Avg. Customer Rating:  47 reviews
Sales Rank: 1078
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 014014305X
Dewey Decimal Number: 420
EAN: 9780140143058
ASIN: 014014305X
Publication Date: July 29, 1999
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: UK seller, all orders dispatched next working day via Royal Mail, order with confidence.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A Global Perspective February 11, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
A history of the English language delivered with the humourous, anecdotal approach that can be expected from Bill Bryson, even though it must be said the book can be fairly heavy going at times. The book provides a comprehensive essay on the development of a truly global language and demonstrates how the more widely the language is used the faster it is likely to change in daily use. Understanding this is key to appreciating the continued development of language as it adapts to contemporary needs. I am sure the Venerable Bede (referenced early in the book) and his monastic followers would have adapted quite happily to text language, apparently the latest development to the English language. Bryson's book presents a compelling argument as to why this should indeed be a development rather than the threat it is often seen as.
 Tough going September 6, 2006
10 out of 22 found this review helpful
Usually I really enjoy Bryson's books, be it hillwalking through the Appalachian mountains or roughing it through Oz. This time, however, I felt I was the one slogging through the rough stuff. Wow. I love English grammar, and the Eats, Shoots and Leaves is a wonderful book. I know my stuff in the way that proofreaders need to, and I've even lectured to foreign university students in English grammar, but this was just too much. It's certainly a good collection, but I felt that Bryson's humour was missing... I'll certainly continue to read his books, but this one is going to be moved to the back of the bookshelves!
 Witty, amusing and NOT a text book. February 25, 2006
30 out of 39 found this review helpful
The fact that some of the previous reviewers get on their high horse about the accuracy or otherwise of this book is to miss the point. In the same way that "A Brief History of Nearly Everything" is not a science textbook, this is not a grammar primer and doesn't pretend to be. Bryson aims to entertain and inform, and actually the other reviewers bear out his point that language is not a fixed entity, it is organic and evolving. It also bears out some of his points about people trying to impose rules on language and getting overheated about orthography and grammar. This simply an amusing and rather irreverant book; I'd much rather read this than Lynne Truss' nasty small-minded tirade on punctuation. Who gives a %£^& whether an apostrophe's in the right place? Oh and, by the way, I'm the son of a Professsor of Linguistics and have studied languages myself, so I also know what I'm talking about. Buy this book. it's funny.
Fascinating and entertaining, but not always accurate January 2, 2005
31 out of 53 found this review helpful
I love Bill Bryson's books and have read most of them. Usually I read them for the informative travel info and "funny" factors, but I realized reading this book that Bill Bryson can make entertaining reading of any subject.Unfortunately, a very short time into the book, I lost a little faith because I realized that were quite a few inaccuracies regarding German. I have also read in other posts here that there are inaccuracies regarding French, Swedish and Russian. So it seems like it should not be taken as the gospel, which you do actually think when you are reading it. I am English and studied Linguistics, I also speak fluent German. So also regarding many of the linguistic issues, there are a lot of things I didn't consider to be too correct. In addition, there are a lot of points about the lack of logic in English grammar. Grammar in any language is a lot easier to understand if you speak another language. So for example, the issue about how to define a noun - well if you speak German it is easy: it is anything that is written with an initial capital letter. Which makes it very easier to know what is a noun in English.
 Does he think we're stupid? October 20, 2004
35 out of 61 found this review helpful
I always look forward to starting a new book by Bill Bryson and The Mother Tongue was no exception, but by the time I had read the first few pages I was so taken aback by his apparent lack of respect for the reader that I almost gave up. I did read it to the end and it did make me smile but I just couldn't shake off the feeling that either he or his French advisor was seriously taking us/him for a ride. "Etre de Birmingham" : "To be bored". What??? And I have yet to meet a single French person who knows what an "American swindle" or a "refueling stop" might be! I enjoyed, as always, his wit and style but the blatant mistakes concerning the French language gave me the impression that the author didn't really care if he got it right or not, as long as it was funny. Perhaps it should be read as pure fiction; that way you don't feel as if you're being taken for a total idiot. I'd love to know if he felt as conned as I did when the reviews started coming in. Do tell Bill.......
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