The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

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Bryson was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2013, [43] becoming the first non-Briton to receive this honour. [44] [45] His biography at the Society reads:

Likewise, since there is no common word for “sea,” they likely began as inland tribes. And when they migrated to the coast, they invented their own separate words for the ocean. Then I thought, well, it was written more than 25 years ago, so things that sounded like old stories to me may have been new stories then – like this one: Why was this book even published? There are so many errors, inaccuracies, misconceptions, misunderstandings and whatnot, I don't even know where to begin. (And I'm not even a linguist.) In 1066, the Norman king William I conquered England and displaced the reigning Anglo-Saxon ruling elite. Norman French came to exert its own powerful influence on English vocabulary and structure—no fewer than 10,000 words can be traced to the time of the Norman Conquest. Historical EvolutionMother Tongue is a series of essays on the origins of human language, with plenty of interesting scientific insights, then to the messy origins of English amid the various waves of invasions of the original Celtic peoples of Britain by Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Normans, Scandinavians (Vikings), and so forth, to its growing status as a global language. I enjoyed this part of the book the most, learning a lot about the origins of the language that was especially useful now that I live in England myself. I also didn't know that Latin evolved into French, Spanish, and Italian among other languages, to my embarrassment. Given the many travels we've had through Europe in the past two years, a lot of the early origins of the Celtic peoples in Europe and the migrations of various peoples across the continent and to the British isles during the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages is really fascinating stuff. Knowing that "The Mother Tongue" was published in 1990, I had fun imagining what additions Bryson would have added to the text today, knowing how many new words have been adopted since the Internet took over our world. Overall, this was a pleasant read and is a nice complement to other books that have been written about the English language. Recommended. Pignataro, Juliana Rose (3 October 2019). "21 Books to Curl Up With This Fall". Newsweek . Retrieved 31 January 2020. Bill Bryson receives Honorary Doctorate". University Business. 26 July 2015 . Retrieved 16 July 2018.

Then again, he seems to think that Pennsylvania Dutch is a form of pidgin English, so perhaps that’s unsurprising! Bryson, Bill (3 July 2014). "Interview: Bill Bryson". nursinginpractice.com. Interviewed by Jenny Chou. Cogora Ltd.

Summary

Well, a sample of two is not enough to go on, apparently because this turned out disappointing, for two primary reasons:

The poet Robert Browning caused considerable consternation by including the word twat in one of his poems, thinking it an innocent term. The work was Pippa Passes, written in 1841 and now remembered for the line "God's in His heaven, all's right with the world." But it also contains this disconcerting passage: Also, Irish and Welsh orthography is far more internally consistent than is that of English—but Bryson only allows the features of English to be virtues.) He repeatedly dings Irish (and even more so Welsh) for having spellings that are bizarre, strange, overly convoluted, etc, when what he should mean is that the Irish language attaches sound values to the Latin alphabet that are different from those used by English. All of this makes me question all the other "facts" I don't know anything about, I simply don't know if I've learned more about them from reading this book.the true story of an American lady, newly arrived in London, who opened her front door to find three burly men on the steps informing her that they were her dustmen. ‘Oh,’ she blurted, ‘but I do my own dusting.’ And that's what I will start with. I am not an English native speaker. I have never lived in any English-speaking country. I have been learning English at school. I manage pretty well, I can read books in English without too much difficulty. Which does not change the fact that there are a lot of words that I do not know (and I'm fully aware of that). I am also not particularly sensitive to differences in pronunciation between British and American English. I mean, I'm aware of these differences (I am usually able to recognize an American and a British when I hear them), but I do not think I can pronounce the word first according to one and then according to the other pronunciation. I read this book in English and I must admit that although it is very interesting, as a non-English speaker, I was not able to fully appreciate it and understand it.

Bill Bryson receives honorary doctorate". King's College London. 14 November 2012. Bill Bryson OBE: the UK's highest-selling author of non-fiction, acclaimed as a science communicator, historian and man of letters. Shortform note: At its peak in the early 20th century, the British Empire occupied nearly one-quarter of the world’s total land area and counted nearly proportion of the world’s people as its subjects.) As Jones studied these texts, he began to recognize unmistakable similarities between Sanskrit and the European languages. In Latin, for example, “king” is “rex,” and in Sanskrit it’s “raja.” And Sanskrit for the English word “birch” is “bhurja.” Seeing Further: The Story of Science & the Royal Society, edited by Bill Bryson". The Guardian. 9 January 2010 . Retrieved 5 December 2022.

Bill Bryson". Durham University. Archived from the original on 5 December 2010 . Retrieved 29 July 2010. Nevertheless, the book itself is a bundle of joy of finding invariably humorous take on how word changed - even corrupted - over the course of time. It is amusing to know people made mistakes and those mistakes held on until today. In May 2007, he became the president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. [36] [37] His first focus in this role was the establishment of an anti-littering campaign across England. He discussed the future of the countryside with Richard Mabey, Sue Clifford, Nicholas Crane, and Richard Girling at CPRE's Volunteer Conference in November 2007. [21] In 2011, Bryson won the Golden Eagle Award from the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild. [38]