The Mother Tongue English & How It Got That Way

my least favorite bill bryson book

Fantastic book. Wondered why I never learned any of this at school. Gave me an appreciation of why English is the way it is.

I love the writing of Bill Bryson and so it pains me to pan him but this book, while absolutely delightful, does play fast and loose with the facts. It feels like dear Bill put more of his energies into being clever and amusing rather than knuckling down to some hard research. An example? Bryson states that “Estimates of the number of languages in the world usually fix on a figure of about...more

I love the writing of Bill Bryson and so it pains me to pan him but this book, while absolutely delightful, does play fast and loose with the facts. It feels like dear Bill put more of his energies into being clever and amusing rather than knuckling down to some hard research. An example? Bryson states that “Estimates of the number of languages in the world usually fix on a figure of about 2,700…” Ethnologue lists 6912 living languages in the world today. I doubt that 4200+ languages were discovered between 1990 (when this was originally published) and today. I picked this up because I’ve really enjoyed Bryson’s other works, especially his first-person travelogues. I think I’d better stick with those. I wish I hadn’t invested in this.   hide

I am a sucker for creation stories and languages, and what better one that the creation of modern English?