The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

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And that's what I will start with. I am not an English native speaker. I have never lived in any English-speaking country. I have been learning English at school. I manage pretty well, I can read books in English without too much difficulty. Which does not change the fact that there are a lot of words that I do not know (and I'm fully aware of that). I am also not particularly sensitive to differences in pronunciation between British and American English. I mean, I'm aware of these differences (I am usually able to recognize an American and a British when I hear them), but I do not think I can pronounce the word first according to one and then according to the other pronunciation. I read this book in English and I must admit that although it is very interesting, as a non-English speaker, I was not able to fully appreciate it and understand it. Bryson was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2013, [43] becoming the first non-Briton to receive this honour. [44] [45] His biography at the Society reads: Author Bill Bryson Takes Agent to Court". Courthouse News Service. Pasadena, California. 4 December 2012. Archived from the original on 16 February 2013 . Retrieved 31 January 2020. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL ( link)

No place in the English-speaking world is more breathtakingly replete with dialects than Great Britain. In America, people as far apart as New York State and Oregon speak with largely identical voices. According to some estimates almost two thirds of the American population, living on some 8o percent of the land area, speak with the same accent—a quite remarkable degree of homogeneity. So, Bill Bryson + cheap equals insta-buy for me, apparently. Too bad even Bill Bryson couldn't make this terribly entertaining. The book's 1990 publication also betrays its age as it is hopelessly out of date when describing how absurdly impractical the computer keyboards are for Chinese and Japanese users and how that has hindered their economic development. Can't blame a book for being out of date, so it's actually somewhat amusing to see how things can change so much in just a few decades. He repeatedly dings Irish (and even more so Welsh) for having spellings that are bizarre, strange, overly convoluted, etc, when what he should mean is that the Irish language attaches sound values to the Latin alphabet that are different from those used by English. Awful. Awful. I’m now retrospectively mad, five years later, that I once attended a talk by this man. Avoid.

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In 2012, he received the Kenneth B. Myer Award, from the Florey Institute of Neuroscience, in Melbourne, Australia. [ citation needed] So how many grains of salt would I need to swallow the declaration that immediately followed? An unhealthy amount, I’m sure.

Why was this book even published? There are so many errors, inaccuracies, misconceptions, misunderstandings and whatnot, I don't even know where to begin. (And I'm not even a linguist.) Review part I: Bringing science to the people, Bill Bryson style, is always funny and edcuational. However, this book is old, (it was written before the Wall came down, which is evident in the mentioning of the number of citizens of the Soviet Union who don't speak Russian) and a lot has happened in the lingustic field since then. So I'm not sure the information is always correct. Until I find out, I will simply enjoy the book as is :-) Bryson was born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa, the son of Bill Bryson Sr., a sports journalist who worked for 50 years at the Des Moines Register, and Agnes Mary (née McGuire), the home furnishings editor at the same newspaper. [8] [9] His mother was of Irish descent. [10] He had an older brother, Michael (1942–2012), and a sister, Mary Jane Elizabeth. In 2006, Bryson published The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, a humorous account of his childhood years in Des Moines. [9] In 2006 Frank Cownie, the mayor of Des Moines, awarded Bryson the key to the city and announced that 21 October 2006 would be "Bill Bryson, The Thunderbolt Kid, Day." [11] William McGuire "Bill" Bryson, OBE, FRS was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. He settled in England in 1977, and worked in journalism until he became a full time writer. He lived for many years with his English wife and four children in North Yorkshire. He and his family then moved to New Hampshire in America for a few years, but they have now returned to live in the UK. The only reason that I’m giving it 4 stars rather than 5 is that it’s a bit dated. It was written in 1990 before the internet age. I would simply love to see an updated version. All in all, this was a fun and informative read.Bill Bryson receives Honorary Doctorate". University Business. 26 July 2015 . Retrieved 16 July 2018. I teach English as a foreign language but other than that linguistics and language learning is just a hobby, having said that, I know enough Irish, German, Czech, Russian and Spanish to know that the things he said about these languages are half truths or complete and utter codswallop. For example claiming that the German preposition/suffix "auf" is unusual among foreign words in that it has more than one meaning... anyone who has spent any time learning a language will tell you that all of them have words with dozens of meanings (Except maybe Esperanto?). Furthermore there is no preposition in any language that cannot be translated into at least three or four prepositions in English, nor are there any English prepositions that don't have numerous translations in the other language. That's just how prepositions are! They don't translate! With the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Bill Bryson Prize for Science Communication was established in 2005. [32] The competition engages students from around the world in explaining science to non-experts. As part of its 350th anniversary celebrations in 2010 the Royal Society commissioned Bryson to edit a collection of essays by scientists and science writers about the history of science and the Royal Society over the previous three and a half centuries entitled Seeing Further. [33] [34] In 2003, in conjunction with World Book Day, British voters chose Bryson's book Notes from a Small Island as that which best summed up British identity and the state of the nation. [22] Also in 2003, he was appointed a Commissioner for English Heritage. Seeing Further: The Story of Science & the Royal Society, edited by Bill Bryson". The Guardian. 9 January 2010 . Retrieved 5 December 2022.

I know and I do even realise that Bill Bryson is considered an entertaining author and that he also seems to be much loved and appreciated by many. However, I for one have generally and usually found Bryson’s general tone of narrational voice and the boastful, arrogant demeanour he constantly seems to present and yes indeed often downright spew in The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way extremely off-putting and really at best massively condescending, with his claims regarding the supposed superiority of the English language both unacademic and yes, profoundly bigoted and stereotyping (and as such of course absolutely devoid of any kind of linguistic acumen and actual bona fide language based knowledge). And albeit granted that English is at present a so-called and even aptly labelled world language, the reasons why English is such, the reasons why English is so profoundly popular and globally strong at present are NOT (at least in in my humble opinion) due to any type of linguistic superiority, they are primarily and simply cultural and historic in nature and also have much to do with economics and not with English being in any manner a better and superior language linguistically speaking than French, German, Chinese, Russian and so on and so on. So far, we’ve explored the history of the English language mostly as it pertained to its original home—the British Isles. We’ve seen how these historical processes gave rise to a language that is notable for its malleability and adaptability, able to be written and spoken in a wide variety of ways. I found Bill Bryson about a month ago when I read hilarious In a Sunburned Country. I liked that one a lot and decided to try out his other book. And I liked this one too, but unfortunately not as much as In a Sunburned Country. And there are several reasons for that. Including the one that it can be at least partly my fault.

Summary

He surveys the history of language, the world's language families and where English is situated in the Indo-European stream, and all the other offshoots, some which are no longer living languages. He recounts the triumph of Anglo-Saxon language over Celtic (even though many of England's place names preserve their Celtic roots), the impact of the Norman invasion (of 10,000 words, approximately 3/4ths are still in use including much of the language of nobility (duke, baron prince) and much language of jurisprudence (justice, jury, prison among others). He explores the different ways words are created, sometimes by doing nothing! His discussion of pronunciation and particularly the shifts in vowel sounds was fascinating, For example house was once pronounced hoose. You weren't born in a barn but barn in a born. The above list of imperfections does not mean that I did not like the book. Just like always, it's easier for me to specify what I was not delighted with than what I like. And I must admit that this is a very good book. However, I think that it is directed primarily to English native speakers, because they will be able to capture and better understand all the issues that the author raises.