It made me wonder, though, since English is very much a dynamic language co-created together by the whole world depending on the generation, how much it will change in the next 100 years? The Eskimos, as is well known, have fifty words for types of snow—though curiously no word for just plain snow. Bomboras are in the sea, not in rivers, a didgeridoo is not a form of trumpet, and outback is not an Aboriginal word (though bombora is), and we don't normally say "technicolour yawn": it was a joke put forward by Barry Humphries, not common usage. Can't blame a book for being out of date, so it's actually somewhat amusing to see how things can change so much in just a few decades. Equally fascinating are our various forms of wordplay, the ultimate of which must be the palindrome where a sentence says the same thing forwards and backwards (an example from the book: "A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.

From its mongrel origins to its status as the world's most-spoken tongue; its apparent simplicity to its deceptive complexity; its vibrant swearing to its uncertain spelling and pronunciation; Bryson covers all this as well as the many curious eccentricities that make it as maddening to learn as it is flexible to use. However, I for one have generally and usually found Bryson’s general tone of narrational voice and the boastful, arrogant demeanour he constantly seems to present and yes indeed often downright spew in The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way extremely off-putting and really at best massively condescending, with his claims regarding the supposed superiority of the English language both unacademic and yes, profoundly bigoted and stereotyping (and as such of course absolutely devoid of any kind of linguistic acumen and actual bona fide language based knowledge). While I found the book informative and mildly amusing, at the end of the day, it's still a book about the history of words. David Edwards, head of the Joint National Committee on Languages, ‘If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for me,’ [Quoted in the Guardian, April 30, 1988].His next book, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, is a memoir of growing up in 1950s America, featuring another appearance from his old friend Stephen Katz.

I read this years ago, tried to read it to the kids at night, but they were just that bit young, and then listened to the talking book recently. Similarly, we have the divergences between New World and Old and some wonder whether American English will become a distinct language. But Bryson's Anglo-American tin ear failed to pick that up, and he took his ignorance and turned it into a cheap joke at another culture's expense.It is accepted by you that Daunt Books has no control over additional charges in relation to customs clearance. He surveys the history of language, the world's language families and where English is situated in the Indo-European stream, and all the other offshoots, some which are no longer living languages. 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. Bryson's love for his native English is clear enough; so is his painfully obvious lack of knowledge of any other languages. Bill Bryson has also written several highly praised books on the English language, including Mother Tongue and Made in America.

Or this warning to motorists in Tokyo: 'When a passenger of the foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. My one complaint is that, despite being loosely hung on British and American history, for the most part the book lacks a greater structure and ends up reading like a series of interesting facts. He’s sneery enough towards the Académie Française to make me eyeroll even though I think the Académie is full of jackasses, and makes bizarre pronouncements about the French language that a quick look at the dictionary would have proved wrong.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. All of our books are 100% brand new, unread and purchased directly from the publishers in bulk allowing us to pass the huge savings on to you! It is similar with how history's made, there were wars, migrations, proliferation of mass media, the making of dictionaries, public figures making their own linguistic marks (and complete fools of themselves), class and regional divisions, and so on and so forth. I don’t consider myself a word or language nerd at all, yet I loved all the trivia, such as those that I’ve quoted below.