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The Mother Tongue

English & How It Got That Way
rb3221
Dec 25, 2015rb3221 rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
Did you know? As the title states, Bryson takes the reader on an interesting journey of English and how it got that way. He provides us with a reasonably straight forward good overview of his topic along with a variety of interesting facts for the general reader. Some examples: "Language comes ultimately from spontaneous utterances of alarm, joy, pain, and so on." He states that children "can effortlessly learn two structurally quite different languages simultaneously." And did you know that the fall of Rome helped usher in our own tongue. Fascinating that Shakespeare "coined some 2,000 words and gave us countless phrases such as one fell swoop, in my minds eye, vanish into thin air, cold comfort" and countless others. And very interesting that "just forty-three words account for fully half of all the words in common use and that just nine account for fully one quarter in almost any sample of written English." In addition, Bryson spends twelve pages explaining where words come from and has a full chapter on swear words. Overall a worthwhile read.