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| The Mother Tongue | 
 enlarge | Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: £9.78
Buy Used: £2.37
You Save: £7.41 (76%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 239377
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reissue
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 0380715430
Dewey Decimal Number: 420.9
EAN: 9780380715435
ASIN: 0380715430
Publication Date: March 1996
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Ships from the USA - please expect 7 - 21 business days for delivery.
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| Customer Reviews:
Bill is having fun with the tongue. April 29, 2007
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
This book contains more than you expect. Bill Bryson covers language its self with a focus on English. The book covers speech from a historical view, a physical view, an environmental view, a utilitarian view, and many other views. If you find the tape version, you will want to play the tape over again as it cruses through many concepts that leave you thinking and speculating how it could have all gone differently.
A highlight for me (aside from his dirty word list) was the recognition that we try to impose Old Latin syntaxes on Modern English and it can get redicules.
My only disappointment comes when he mentions things I have already read and gets it wrong or off the mark. You have to worry a little about what you do not know and if to trust him. Still it is a fun book.
The advantage of the tape is that you actually hear the pronunciations. When it is a matter of spelling the reader will spell it out for you. Also the reader has the ability to change accents to fit the dialect samples.
The disadvantage is when you want to turn back to a particular page for cross-reference; there is no page to turn. So I would be smart to own both versions.
Intriguing and quite unlike most other Bryson books August 20, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've always enjoyed reading Bill Bryson books, primarily his travel writing which is written in a style of familiarity very easy on the reader. Mother Tongue is quite different, telling a history of the English language and its development throughout the world. No reference to a bearded man drinking in a pub on his own, this is a well-researched book which makes fascinating reading if you have any interest in the development of English.
If anything, I am reminded of a previous book by Bryson, Made In America, which I found thoroughly enjoyable to read. Both books are well-researched, in my view fair in any conclusions made, and most importantly enjoyable to read. The writing style is cleared aimed to the casual readers - sentences appear in the text which are deliberately grammatically incorrect or have spelling errors to illustrate how the language has changed, and how difficult some words are to spell correctly. There's even a chapter all about swearing.
I can't imagine this being the ideal book as a reference for anyone studying the english language, but as a book for a casual reader... definitely recommended!
 Excellent overview of a world language for non-experts October 30, 1998
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Tell your humor editor there's nothing funny about Welsh (lucky she's 3,000 miles away). This is a great overview of the English language and how it has developed over the centuries and in so many countries both as a first and a second language. Two minor quibbles: the author doesn't make clear that Welsh is a phonetic language, i.e. it's pronounced as spelt; he got a little baffled by English pubnames, e.g. "The First and Last" isn't a baffling name - it describes a pub on the outskirts of a town, so it's the first one you see when arriving and the last you see when leaving; and similarly "The Tumbledown Dick" is a reference to the overthrow of Richard Cromwell (what did you think it meant?) I recommend this book to everyone.
A good and gentle introduction... April 10, 1998
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I got the impression early on in reading _The Mother Tongue_ that Bryson was 'carrying a torch' for the English language. As I continued to read, I shelved this attitude into something more akin to British 'civic pride'. The author comes off as very proud of the English language, but perhaps to the exclusion of other languages. Most disappointing, perhaps, was his reference to the myth surrounding the words for snow in the eskimo language (see Pinker, _The Language Instinct_ for further -- fairly convincing -- argument). I generally treat information given as fact with a jaundiced eye, but an error such as this urged me to read even more carefully. This book is probably meant for the casual reader, and as such it succeeds very well. The writing is for the most part quite readable, and the injection of humour and wit is more than welcome. I appreciate writing where I can hear the author's voice, and feel like I'm not being assaulted by the bibliography section of the library.
Gloriously entertaining but factually suspect. February 4, 1998
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
A treasure house of the facts of the history of English and its oddities, but the "facts" are sometimes suspect, eg we do not say gill for girl in South Africa and I'm told that ndlebezakho (not hlebeshako) in Xhosa (incidentally President Mandela's mother tongue; not XoXa) freely translates as darn your ears (not your mother's ears) and is a mild admonition such as to a naughty child and not "the most provocative possible remark". I was comforted by the examples of incorrect grammar and usage quoted from leading authors' works on English, to which one can add examples from the book itself, eg Some idea of the bewilderments ... are indicated; forbidden from; They find particular pleasure in taking old Norman names and mashing them around until they became; Often the names we know places by is. My rating is based on the book's entertainment value, which is only impaired by the uncertainty as to when one can rely on what is said and when not. But I caution against mistaking the book as a serious reference work despite the academic-seeming footnotes. The author himself makes no such disclaimer, at least in my edition (1990).
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