The Mother Tongue
1990 book by Bill Bryson
0-380-71543-0Dewey Decimal
The Mother Tongue is a 1990 book by Bill Bryson which compiles the history and origins of the English language and its various quirks.[1] It is subtitled English And How It Got That Way. The book discusses the Indo-European origins of English, the growing status of English as a global language, the complex etymology of English words, the dialects of English, spelling reform, prescriptive grammar, and other topics including swearing. This account popularises the subject and makes it accessible to the lay reader, but it has been criticised for some inaccuracies, such as the perpetuation of several urban myths.[2]
This book has also been published in the UK by Penguin Books under the title Mother Tongue: The English Language.
Bryson has since followed up this work with Made in America.
References
External links
- The Mother Tongue on Google Books (preview)
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Bill Bryson - selected bibliography
- The Lost Continent
- Neither Here nor There
- Notes from a Small Island
- A Walk in the Woods
- film
- Notes from a Big Country
- Down Under
- African Diary
- The Road to Little Dribbling
- The Mother Tongue
- Made in America
- Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words
- Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors
- A Short History of Nearly Everything
- The Body: A Guide for Occupants
- Shakespeare: The World as Stage
- At Home: A Short History of Private Life
- One Summer: America, 1927
Commons
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