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cinchona's review
4.0
A splendid audiobook, really fun to listen to! It was read by the author, which really showcases his characteristic style--fiercely academic but definitely for the layperson, at turns both erudite and folksy, very thesis-driven but with lightning-fast, delightful meanderings. I always know a book is good if I have to keep stopping it to bug people with nifty things I just heard. I DEFINITELY recommend the audiobook perhaps even over the text version: some of the words just need to be heard.
McWhorter is argumentative, bordering on cranky, and his style won't be for everyone. Watch a TED talk of his before you commit so that you know if you're gonna hate it.
McWhorter is argumentative, bordering on cranky, and his style won't be for everyone. Watch a TED talk of his before you commit so that you know if you're gonna hate it.
sksrenninger's review
4.0
An easy-to-read and very interesting look at how English's grammar came to be, written in straightforward and playful prose by someone who obviously loves language. Relatively extensive citations at the back for anyone who wants to delve deeper. He occasionally belabored the point, his metaphors sometimes muddied his argument rather than clarifying it, and he definitely opens with some straw men (although maybe his audience is full of first-timers who have passionate opinions about right and wrong grammar?) but in general I appreciated the grammar-rather-than-vocabulary approach and learned a lot. I loved this and recommend it for any armchair linguist.
jacquieq's review
4.0
I would not recommend this to anyone that isn't a major language nerd. But as a language nerd myself, I found it very interesting. It was really dense, but I learned a lot.
saranies's review
3.0
This was fine. Introduced some interesting ideas and was conversationally presented.
rodhilton's review against another edition
3.0
"Our Magnificant Bastard Tongue" is a book by linguist John H. McWhorter about the formation of the English language. McWhorter takes the reader on a tour through the various influences for English, focusing not only on the words that fill our vocabulary, but on the changing rules of the grammar as well.
One of the most interesting things I learned from this book is just how stupid and arbitrary a lot of our rules for grammar are. Ending sentences in prepositions, using "John and me went to the store," and other examples of "bad" grammar are actually, in many ways, examples of superior grammar, because they disregard rules that linguists seem to generally regard as pointless holdovers from the influences of the language. The only real reason to use "correct" grammar is to show off how educated and disciplined you are, in the sense that you are putting on display your mastery of even the stupidest rules. I'll never look at grammar nazis the same way, and I'll forever feel like an asshole when judging another person's grammar as "poor", since grammar is constantly evolving and cannot truly be right or wrong.
The main flaw with the book is that it's often difficult to know for whom (eh? eh?) McWhorter has written it. On the one hand, it's an introduction to the history of the English language. On the other, it is a criticism of his peers in the field. Much of the text is too basic to be targeting his contemporaries, but other aspects seem too advanced for laymen.
Most importantly, the book suffers from a problem I've encountered in many books whose main premise is "everyone else in my field has it wrong". When an author comes to laymen and explains how wrong his peers are, he comes off as a crackpot to me. An insane rambler who I assume is not respected by his peers, even though I've read no criticisms by them. For me, an author talking about how nutty all of his contemporaries are strikes me as bizarre, and McWhorter often comes off this way in the book. I enjoyed the book, but I didn't enjoy the subject so much that I'll be reading other books on the material, and thus I am left feeling like the only information I have on the subject has come from a somewhat questionable, fringe source. As a result, I am forced to discount much of it, making the book, though enjoyable, feel like something of a waste of time.
Overall, I learned quite a bit about the English language, but I felt the book could have been structured better and more narrowly targeted to a specific audience.
One of the most interesting things I learned from this book is just how stupid and arbitrary a lot of our rules for grammar are. Ending sentences in prepositions, using "John and me went to the store," and other examples of "bad" grammar are actually, in many ways, examples of superior grammar, because they disregard rules that linguists seem to generally regard as pointless holdovers from the influences of the language. The only real reason to use "correct" grammar is to show off how educated and disciplined you are, in the sense that you are putting on display your mastery of even the stupidest rules. I'll never look at grammar nazis the same way, and I'll forever feel like an asshole when judging another person's grammar as "poor", since grammar is constantly evolving and cannot truly be right or wrong.
The main flaw with the book is that it's often difficult to know for whom (eh? eh?) McWhorter has written it. On the one hand, it's an introduction to the history of the English language. On the other, it is a criticism of his peers in the field. Much of the text is too basic to be targeting his contemporaries, but other aspects seem too advanced for laymen.
Most importantly, the book suffers from a problem I've encountered in many books whose main premise is "everyone else in my field has it wrong". When an author comes to laymen and explains how wrong his peers are, he comes off as a crackpot to me. An insane rambler who I assume is not respected by his peers, even though I've read no criticisms by them. For me, an author talking about how nutty all of his contemporaries are strikes me as bizarre, and McWhorter often comes off this way in the book. I enjoyed the book, but I didn't enjoy the subject so much that I'll be reading other books on the material, and thus I am left feeling like the only information I have on the subject has come from a somewhat questionable, fringe source. As a result, I am forced to discount much of it, making the book, though enjoyable, feel like something of a waste of time.
Overall, I learned quite a bit about the English language, but I felt the book could have been structured better and more narrowly targeted to a specific audience.