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Book Review: The Mother Tongue September 28, 2006
Another helping from the Bill Bryson smorgasboard. This book definitely has a different flavor to it, though, as it's about linguistics, philology, and all things language. This area has actually been a secret interest of mine, as I've always found it fascinating how we learn language, how languages change over time, and how they change across regions. It's one of the many great things about having a kid --you get to watch them learn to think and speak using language, and the natural, organic, and ultimately mysterious way that they go about it completely fascinates me.
Bryson goes into that a little bit, but the majority of the book focuses on the quirks of the English language and how it developed and emerged in its present form out of the mists of history. The point that I took from all this is just how absurd a language English is. Why is "know" spelled with a "k" at the beginning? Why is something "aural" or "urban" instead of "soundish" or "cityish"? What the heck does "spic and span" mean? Imagine if in mathematics 2 + 4 = 6, but 4 + 2 = 5, and 6 - 2 wasn't even possible. That's the level of absurdity we nonchalantly deal with every day, and and Bryson does a good job of making it apparent how weird that is.
Unfortunately this is not the caustic, witty, and consistently funny Bryson that I was used to from his travel diaries and collections of observational humor. It's not exactly textbook dry, but Mother Tongue does get bogged down in one (or two or five) too many examples and meandering blatherings about things that just aren't that interesting to anyone this side of a nameplate that says "Linguist" on it. It's not snappy, it doesn't make you smile that often, and I the only time I really laughed was the wide section of the book that Bryson spends tracing the etymology of the word "fuck." But I admit, that part was pretty funny, ironically thanks to the scholarly tone of most of it.
So this wasn't Bryson's most entertaining work, but it was perhaps his most educational. And I just like this kind of stuff, so any attempt to breathe any character into it was welcome.
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Posted by Bethany on September 29, 2006 11:23 PM:
This was actually the first book of Bryson's that I read. I didn't read any of his less scholarly (why not "schoolish"?) books till years later. Also I am something of a language geek. Maybe that helped me enjoy this book more than you seemed to, though it isn't my favorite Bryson book. I also remember finding the section on the etymology of the word "f*ck" and other swear words hilarious.
Posted by Jamie on October 4, 2006 8:00 AM:
Given that this was one of his earlier books that he wrote before developing the style that trademarks his travel diaries and the completely awesome "A Short History of Nearly Everything" I have to wonder what this book would be like if he rewrote it today. Heck, I'd love to see what he has to say about how technology like the Internet and mobile phones is affecting the English language. And globalization. There's lots of new material, I'd think.