Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson
[amazon] [MBLN]
Supposedly a story of how English came to be, it’s really more of a 250-page Seinfeld joke. It wears thin right away and doesn’t get much better.
“Look at that word! Look at this word! What’s up with that???”
Or maybe it’s a 250-page Yakov Smirnov joke. One of those. In any case it’s 250 pages. That’s not to say there’s nothing of value, there is. It’s just that it’s so interlaced with long lists of words that would be better off as footnotes so you didn’t have to slog your way through them.
Yes, everyone knows Welsh spelling is difficult. Very funny. Everyone knows English is full of spelling inconsistencies. Isn’t that crazy? Ha ha.
There may be a new edition of the book. I certainly hope so. The one I had was the original 1990 edition and it’s very dated. George Bush I and Dan Quayle were the fodder. One can only wonder what he’d make of things like “It depends on what the meaning of is is.” or the endless malapropisms of Bush II.
