The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

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No place in the English-speaking world is more breathtakingly replete with dialects than Great Britain. In America, people as far apart as New York State and Oregon speak with largely identical voices. According to some estimates almost two thirds of the American population, living on some 8o percent of the land area, speak with the same accent—a quite remarkable degree of homogeneity. One curious thing: Norwegians supposedly "talk about departing like an Englishman" (p7) Eh, really? Never heard of that. Googling it, I find only quotes from this book.

Honorary degrees 21st - 25th June". st-andrews.ac.uk. University of St Andrews. 20 June 2005. Archived from the original on 18 August 2016 . Retrieved 11 September 2016. the true story of an American lady, newly arrived in London, who opened her front door to find three burly men on the steps informing her that they were her dustmen. ‘Oh,’ she blurted, ‘but I do my own dusting.’ He worked as a journalist, first for the Bournemouth Evening Echo, eventually becoming chief copy editor of the business section of The Times and deputy national news editor of the business section of The Independent.Germans talk about ein image problem or das Cash Flow, Austrians eat Big Mäcs, Japanese spread a blanket and have a pikunikku, drink kohi (coffee) or miruku (milk), speak through a maiku (microphone), shop in a depaato (department store), and put on meeku (make-up). Poles watch telewizja and French shop at le drugstore. William McGuire "Bill" Bryson, OBE, FRS was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. He settled in England in 1977, and worked in journalism until he became a full time writer. He lived for many years with his English wife and four children in North Yorkshire. He and his family then moved to New Hampshire in America for a few years, but they have now returned to live in the UK. And that's what I will start with. I am not an English native speaker. I have never lived in any English-speaking country. I have been learning English at school. I manage pretty well, I can read books in English without too much difficulty. Which does not change the fact that there are a lot of words that I do not know (and I'm fully aware of that). I am also not particularly sensitive to differences in pronunciation between British and American English. I mean, I'm aware of these differences (I am usually able to recognize an American and a British when I hear them), but I do not think I can pronounce the word first according to one and then according to the other pronunciation. I read this book in English and I must admit that although it is very interesting, as a non-English speaker, I was not able to fully appreciate it and understand it.

The advantage of the recorded version is that you hear the pronunciations. When it is a matter of spelling the reader will spell it out for you. Also, the reader can change accents to fit the dialect samples. He certainly loves English. On the dying of Irish (as a language), he says: "we naturally lament the decline of these languages, but it's not an altogether undiluted tragedy. Consider the loss to English literature, if Joyce, Shaw, Swift, Yeats, Wilde, and Ireland's other literary masters have written in what inescapably a fringe language, their work will be as little known to us as those poets in Iceland or Norway, and that would be a tragedy indeed. No country has given the word incomparable literature per head of population than Ireland, and for that reason alone we might be excused to a small, "selfish" celebration that English was the language of her greatest writers." This is a hindsight bias.Pignataro, Juliana Rose (3 October 2019). "21 Books to Curl Up With This Fall". Newsweek . Retrieved 31 January 2020. Seeing Further – The Story of Science and the Royal Society". The Royal Society. 28 January 2010 . Retrieved 5 December 2022. Furthermore, Bryson delves into the etymology of words, revealing intriguing connections and surprising origins. He discusses the influence of Latin, French, and other languages on English vocabulary, shedding light on how it has absorbed words from countless sources and created a uniquely diverse lexicon. On the other hand, as a foreigner who had to learn English (and I’m native in non-Roman language), Bryson's insight in this area was particularly interesting and accurate for me. Especially when it comes to intricate English pronunciation. So a big plus for that.

These Cro-Magnon people were identical to us: they had the same physique, the same brain, the same looks. And, unlike all previous hominids who roamed the earth, they could choke on food. That may seem a trifling point, but the slight evolutionary change that pushed man's larynx deeper into his throat, and thus made choking a possibility, also brought with it the possibility of sophisticated, well articulated speech.

At first glance, it might seem unlikely that the native tongue of a people occupying just one part of an island off the coast of northwestern Europe would become the international language of business and diplomacy. To understand how this came to be, we need to understand the history of English and the processes by which it evolved into the language we speak and write today. What are the origins of English? What are the characteristics of the language that made it easier for people all over the globe to adopt and spread it? What quirks and features of English make it unique? And what is the future of the language? For the next several centuries, what was to become the English language grew, swallowing up Celtic, Angle, Saxon languages, and then adding Norman, and French… then discarding loads of words, but steadily adding Latin, French and Scandinavian words. Shakespeare came along and single-handedly added thousands of words, like: barefaced, critical, leapfrog, monumental, castigate, majestic, obscene, frugal, radiance, dwindle, and many more. Other bright lights of England, like Ben Jonson, Thomas More and Isaac Newton, added more. The Mother Tongue" not only presents a comprehensive account of the history of the English language but also explores its global impact. Bryson delves into how English has become a dominant language worldwide, focusing on its spread during the British Empire and its current prevalence as a lingua franca. And that's what I will start with. I am not an English native speaker. I have never lived in any English-speaking country. I have been learning English at school. I manage pretty well, I can read books in English without too much difficulty. Which does not change the fact that there are a lot of words that I do not know (and I'm fully aware of that). I am also not particularly sensitive to differences in pronunciation between British and American English. I mean, I'm aware of these differences (I am usually able to recognize an American and a British when I hear them), but I do not think I can pronounce the word first according to one and then according to the other pronunciation. I read this book in English and I must admit that although it is very interesting, as a non-English speaker