Mother Tongue - Bill Bryson > Reviews (7)

'Do not read this book in public'. Actually that's a health warning which could be applied to most Bill Bryson books. Don't read them in a public place, because you'll laugh so much people will look at you like you're crazy. And don't whatever you do read them on a plane. Otherwise the other passengers will stare at you strangely for the remainder of the flight!

Most people know Bill Bryson for his travel writing. And if you've never heard of 'Mother Tongue' before it's because strictly speaking it's not a travel book. It's more a sort of linguistics book, being as linguistics, or the study of language, is one of Bill's greatest interests (apart from travel writing, that is!). In regular bookstores it's usually lumped together with the other Bill Bryson titles, alternatively, it's quite easy to locate a copy online somewhere like Amazon by just typing in the title.

I expected this to be a fairly dry book but actually it's very entertaining. I read it on a transatlantic flight and I have to say I had great difficulty putting it down. The book carries on rather well from Bill's other book 'Made in America' which I think I may also review on Ciao sometime, however, unlike made in America the book goes into less detail about American life and culture and delves more into the history and origins of the English language. Of course, being Bill Bryson, this is done in a thoroughly amusing and entertaining way. Consider the first paragraph, 'More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it seems, try to. It would be charitable to say that the results are sometimes mixed'.

Some of the more obvious themes of the book concern themselves with such issues as the origins of language, for example Bryson's theory that Homo Sapiens succeeded where Neandertal Man didn't because he was better at expressing himself. For example, whereas Homo Sapiens possessed the linguistic ability to deal with concepts such as, 'Today let's kill some red deer. You take some big sticks and drive the deer out of the woods and we'll stand by the riverbank with our spears and kill them as they come towards us', Neandertal Man probably went no further than 'I'm hungry. Let's hunt'.

Other themes dealt with are 'common pitfalls for foreigners', 'names', 'spelling' and a hilarious chapter entitled 'where words came from', where we learn how words evolved through being misheard, mispelt, borrowed from other languages, joined together, shortened or merely invented (Shakespeare used 17,677 words of which roughly a tenth were words that had never been used before). Among other we learn that asparagus was once 'sparrow grass' and that the word 'arachibutyrophobia' signifies a morbid fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. Several items are quite thought provoking, such as the whereabouts of opposites to words such as inept, dishevelled, ruthless and unkempt ('Good morning Mr Brown, I must say you're looking very kempt today'. ' Her ruth for others knew no bounds'.

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For those who love Bryson's endless lampooning of American life and culture, there are several chapters devoted to the development of American English and the ways in which it evolved away from British English. In many ways American English has preserved a lot of what British people would now consider very archaic terms such as 'gotten', 'platter' (for a large dish), the use of 'progress' as a verb, 'assignment' (in the sense of a job or task) and 'deck of cards' (we would say 'pack) which were all words in common use as the time the languages diverged. Bryson passionately believes that American English, far from bastardising the English language, has in fact preserved it in its purest form. And through the study of pronounciation he concludes that it is not unlikely that were it possible to hear a British soldier of the 1790's speaking English today, in dialect terms he might sound not unlike a modern American.

Not everyone who has read and enjoyed Bill Bryson travel works will necessarily want to read this book. However if you have followed his fascination with statistics (for example in 'Notes From A Big Country' he records how many Americans end up injuring themselves sufficiently severely to warrant a trip to the emergency room as a result of changing a pillowcase!) then you may also enjoy 'Mother Tongue'. If you have ever wondered why we spell colour with a 'u' and Americans don't, then this is probably the book for you!