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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.
kelpish's review
4.0
Linguistics and the impact of history on language is so much fun. Language is so malleable and it’s fascinating to track the shifts in vocabulary, prononciation, and usage over time. I’d also love to refer people to parts of this book when they complain about the “grammar” of the use of the singular they.
Fun read if you’re into that sort of thing. If you like this book, I highly recommend “The History of the English Language” podcast. They have a long back catalogue and nearly everything mentioned in this book is also detailed in that podcast.
Fun read if you’re into that sort of thing. If you like this book, I highly recommend “The History of the English Language” podcast. They have a long back catalogue and nearly everything mentioned in this book is also detailed in that podcast.
bethan182's review
2.0
For what I thought was going to be a relatively light look at the history of the English language, a lot of this is dedicated to basically saying how bad other academics are
catseye6773's review
4.0
Interesting but a little repeating, like he was working towards a word count
stevenyenzer's review against another edition
3.0
McWhorter is one of the more engaging academic writers I've had the pleasure of reading, but I still found this book a bit slow in the middle. It required just a bit more careful and attentive reading that I was willing to give at the time, which likely has more to do with my own situation than the author.
Nonetheless, I found many parts of Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue compelling, and McWhorter particularly excels when lambasting, as he does with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the traditional story of English, and most memorably, folks who lord their grammatical knowledge over others.
Nonetheless, I found many parts of Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue compelling, and McWhorter particularly excels when lambasting, as he does with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the traditional story of English, and most memorably, folks who lord their grammatical knowledge over others.
becca_g_powell's review
3.0
Cool. This was a very interesting book, and it drew my attention to odd things in our language that I've always taken for granted. (Why is that "do" stuck randomly in sentences for no reason?). It gets a little long winded at points, but if you're a good skimmer you can just go ahead and skip those parts. Also, he kept scoffing at the people who think that the way Anglo-Saxons/Vikings/Normans brought a bunch of words to English is interesting, saying that that story is overtold and boring. It may be overtold, but I'm not so sure it's as much of a throwaway subject as he treats it. I'm always interested to figure out why our vocabulary works the way it does as much as I'm interested in the way our grammar works the way it does.