The Mother Tongue : English and How It Got That Way

“Vastly informative and vastly entertaining...A scholarly and fascinating book.” —Los Angeles Times With dazzling wit and astonishing insight, Bill Bryson explores the remarkable history, eccentricities, resilience and sheer fun of the English language. From the first descent of the larynx into the throat (why you can talk but your dog can’t), to the fine lost art of swearing, Bryson tells the fascinating, often uproarious story of an inadequate, second-rate tongue of peasants that developed into one of the world’s largest growth industries.

With dazzling wit and astonishing insight, Bill Bryson—the acclaimed author of The Lost Continent—brilliantly explores the remarkable history, eccentricities, resilience and sheer fun of the English language. From the first descent of the larynx into the throat (why you can talk but your dog can't), to the fine lost art of swearing, Bryson tells the fascinating, often uproarious story of an inadequate, second-rate tongue of peasants that developed into one of the world's largest growth industries.

Clever, insightful, often hilarious, The Mother Tongue is an engaging jaunt through the quirks and byways of the world's most important--and baffling--of languages. Readers will learn why island, freight, and colonel are spelled in such unphonetic ways; why four has a u in it but forty does not; why Noah Webster was a liar, a cheat, and a plagiarist; and other fascinating facts about our mother tongue.

Only Bill Bryson could make a book about the English language so entertaining. With his boundless enthusiasm and restless eye for the absurd, this is his astonishing tour of English. 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. Bill Bryson's classic Mother Tongue is a highly readable and hilarious tale of how English came to be the world's language. The World's Language The Dawn of Language Global Language The First Thousand Years Where Words Come From Pronunciation Varieties of English Spelling Good English and Bad Order Out of Chaos Old World, New World English as a World Language Names Swearing Wordplay The Future of English Select Bibliography Index The noted humorist offers a journey through the intricacies, puzzles and quirks of the English language, tracing the history of English from its earliest origins to the present day Provides a humorous history of the English language covering such topics as spelling, pronunciation, swearing, and wordplay MORE THAN 300 MILLION PEOPLE IN the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to.