These characteristics gave English a versatility that would later be a major asset as it spread to nearly all corners of the globe.

The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way: Bryson The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way: Bryson

Bill Bryson's classic Mother Tongue is a highly readable and hilarious tale of how English came to be the world's language. The Italians even have a word for the mark left on a table by a moist glass (culacino) while the Gaelic speakers of Scotland, not to be outdone, have a word for the itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whiskey. To take just one example, the sh sound can be spelled sh as in mash; ti as in ration; or ss as in session.The book discusses the Indo-European origins of English, the growing status of English as a global language, the complex etymology of English words, the dialects of English, spelling reform, prescriptive grammar, and other topics including swearing. The Mother Tongue is a 1990 book by Bill Bryson which compiles the history and origins of the English language and its various quirks. The Bard of Avon alone added some 2,000 words to the language, such as mimic, bedroom, lackluster, hobnob.

The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way - Goodreads

This book has also been published in the UK by Penguin Books under the title Mother Tongue: The English Language.This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. His new book The Body: A Guide for Occupants was shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize and is an international bestseller.

The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

He then traces back to the dawn of language itself and explains the slight evolutionary change in humans that made speech possible and the mysterious way in which languages developed among isolated groups at roughly the same time. My only disappointment comes when he mentions things I have already read and got wrong or off the mark. Download The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way by Bill Bryson in PDF EPUB format complete free.Indeed, many parts of the world view the English language itself as a symbol of western colonialism. The reason for this is that the rules of English grammar were originally modeled on those of Latin, which in the seventeenth century was considered the purest and most admirable of tongues. In another where a character asks if he can bring a date to the funeral, the Spanish subtitle has him asking if he can bring a fig to the funeral. But it's hard to enjoy Bryson's jokes when you have this nagging suspicion that he's bending the truth for the sake of a snappy punchline.

Mother Tongue, The Story of the English Language by Bill Mother Tongue, The Story of the English Language by Bill

We’ve explored the origins of English, its evolution over time, and its emergence as a dominant language of global business and politics.

The Finns, lacking the sort of words you need to describe your feelings when you stub your toe getting up to answer a phone at 2. Unlike those languages whose grammatical structures derived more from Latin, English mostly lacks hard and fast rules governing tense, split infinitives, or any number of thorny grammatical or syntactic issues.