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A review by rbruehlman
The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson
3.0
I hate giving this book 3 stars because it's not a bad or boring book! It's very engagingly written and easy to read. However, it's also ... a lot, especially if you read it relatively quickly. While in no way dense, it's nonetheless a firehose of information. I really believe this book is best read in short bursts over a course of weeks or months, to allow everything to sink in. If you read it in a few days, as I did, the various interesting facts blend together and don't quite stick the way they should.
I seriously contemplated linguistics as a major in college, so while I obviously didn't know all of the specific examples Bryson covers (there are so many!), I knew most of the overall concepts. Ergo not a ton of "whoa, mind blown!" moments for me, but that's certainly no fault of the book. Given my interest in the topic, it's all inherently intriguing to me. Nonetheless, in spite of my bias, I think the average curious person not enthralled by the topic will find Bryson's presentation engaging. I really liked the section on names in particular; now I know why bars and restaurants are always called something like "The Fox and the Sword," or something similarly nonsensical. And here I thought they were just trying to be artsy and hip!
While much of the book's content remains true and consistent, such as the history of the English language, I felt the book's age a bit. The English language has changed a lot over the past twenty or thirty years--the homogenization of accents, the increasing mutual intelligibility of English dialects because of mass media, language change driven through the internet and social media, and so much more. These are very interesting topics with a profound effect on the English language, but ones this book can obviously not address because it's so old. I would love to see an updated version of this book that reflects the English of the 21st century.
I seriously contemplated linguistics as a major in college, so while I obviously didn't know all of the specific examples Bryson covers (there are so many!), I knew most of the overall concepts. Ergo not a ton of "whoa, mind blown!" moments for me, but that's certainly no fault of the book. Given my interest in the topic, it's all inherently intriguing to me. Nonetheless, in spite of my bias, I think the average curious person not enthralled by the topic will find Bryson's presentation engaging. I really liked the section on names in particular; now I know why bars and restaurants are always called something like "The Fox and the Sword," or something similarly nonsensical. And here I thought they were just trying to be artsy and hip!
While much of the book's content remains true and consistent, such as the history of the English language, I felt the book's age a bit. The English language has changed a lot over the past twenty or thirty years--the homogenization of accents, the increasing mutual intelligibility of English dialects because of mass media, language change driven through the internet and social media, and so much more. These are very interesting topics with a profound effect on the English language, but ones this book can obviously not address because it's so old. I would love to see an updated version of this book that reflects the English of the 21st century.