Notes on The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson

The Mother Tongue
English & How It Got That Way

Bill Bryson
Perennial
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1990

So I really like the subject matter of this book.  Thanks to one of my uncles who will remain anonymous for sharing.

Just the title page leaves me with questions.  The & was used in the title- and how do I know when that should be done?  Is that a choice?

Is HarperCollinsPublishers one word, like the way I type my last name?  It's a name, so do they get to spell it how they want?  Could I name my kid something spelled HGyT6four but tell everyone it's pronounced George?


The book is dedicated To Cynthia.  But it's written
T O   C Y N T H I A
which is interesting too.  Living with Mama, who gave me a love of language, I read a book in her honor, how sweet.


300 to 330 million native English speakers and 61 English based creoles pp. 180-1 around the world in Sierra Leone, Papua New Guinea, etc.

260 million Spanish, 150 million Portuguese, 100 million French
750 million Mandarin

Forty four countries list English as one of their official languages; that's about one third of the world, while French is official in 27, Spanish 20

A very interesting choice for a worldwide language- mixture of Germanic, Greek and Latin, but with very few words borrowed from German; just lots that were there before English and then turned into English and German...

p. 13 and 147
 Webster's Third New International Dictionary has 450,000 words
revised Oxford English Dictionary has 615,000
p. 147  Samuel Johnson's 43,000 words



Words in common use- English 200,000   German 184,000   French 100,000

pp. 80-1 There are about 100 common prefixes and suffixes in English, making many other possibilities for each root.  For instance, the book maddeningly states that there are six common prefixes to turn a word into a negative.  We can add a, anti, in, il, im, ir, un or non in front of a word and- I counted, dude, and that's 8. Of course, those forms are only used in front of certain letters so I guess that's what he was getting at- variant forms of the same prefix, I suppose. 

Crazy huge amount of synonyms and spelling inconsistencies

p. 15 There are 100 words for yam for the "residents of the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea."

p. 17 The Japanese word for foreigner means "stinking of foreign hair"
Germans call cockroaches "Frenchmen."


p. 75
Anglo-Saxon nouns married to non-Anglos-Saxon adjectives:
ocular eyes
oral mouth
literary book
aquatic water
domestic house
lunar moon
filial son   This reminds me of my six semesters of Mandarin where all the stories were about filial piety and we had no idea what the stories were talking about

urban town
solar sun
   p. 75  the word dog is related in no way known to any other word


It annoyed me to no end that the author thinks Shakespeare invented so many words.  How do we know what words found nowhere else were already written and spoken by the time he came along since so much information is missing and nobody studies anything from that time period but him?

p. 121

This list of misspelled words is awesome.

supercede
conceed
procede
idiosyncracy
concensus
accomodate
impressario
irresistable
rhythym
opthalmologist
diptheria
opthalmologist
anamoly
afficianado
caesarian
grafitti

Ouch- English, this is pretty bad.

p. 167-8

At the turn of the century New York had more speakers of German than anywhere in the world except Vienna and Berlin, more Irish than anywhere but Dublin, more Russians than in Kiev, more Italians than in Milan or Naples.

p. 73
 Greek to Latin to Norman related words that took different routes into English
canal or channel
regard or reward
poor or pauper
catch or chase
cave or cage
amiable or amicable
coy or quiet
sordid or swarthy
entirety or integrity
p. 96
chief or chef


Some three word relationships, from common roots entering English from three routes:
cattle chattel capital
hotel hostel hospital
strait straight strict

jaunty, gentle, gentile, genteel


Icelandic hasn't changed much at all in a thousand years

poppycock is Dutch for soft dung
cafeteria is Mexican
prairie is French
dollar went from German to Spanish to English


p. 73
shampoo is Indian
boondocks is Tagalog
chaparral is Basque
slogan - Gaelic
breeze - Spanish
caucus - Algonquin
ketchup - Chinese
potato - Haitian
sofa - Arabic

p. 209 has a list of incomprehensible names in English of countries that call themselves other things.  It's time we tried to use whatever name they call themselves.  Come on, my name is Carl and if I go to Spain it doesn't turn into Carlos, but it's helpful to know that the names are related- like Carol, Caroll, Karel, Karl, Charles etc.

p.214 No native swear words in some languages

p. 36 To most English speakers a pause in conversation of 4 seconds or more is intolerably rude.