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A review by rodhilton
Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English by John McWhorter
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.