The Mother Tongue

By: Bill Bryson

Narrated by: Stephen McLaughlin

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.

©1990 Bill Bryson (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers

Entertaining entry for beginners

I am not a linguist or student in the field so I can't comment on the accuracy of the information presented. However, Bryson does cite sources and I is up front about areas where there is on going debate or no clear answer. Narrator does a good job with what could be difficult material to convey without visuals.

Attain word enlightment, if you can listen quickly

What did you like best about The Mother Tongue? What did you like least?

This book will enlighten you to the oddities of many English word spellings and originations. After listening to it I enjoyed sharing the things I learned with my fiancé. The narrator did a great job of pronouncing Welsh, Gaelic, French and words from all sorts of languages that I would have had difficulty with if I was just reading it. However, a good deal of the book was the spelling out of words. For example...'knight' is spelled 'K' 'N' 'I' 'G' 'H' 'T'. It was EXTREMELY difficult to follow along when the narrator spelled out long, complex words. It was just something meant to be read and not to be listened to.

Would you recommend The Mother Tongue to your friends? Why or why not?

Yes I'd recommend the book but I would recommend it be read if possible, instead of being listened to.

Which character – as performed by Stephen McLaughlin – was your favorite?

There are no characters in the book.

Did The Mother Tongue inspire you to do anything?

If anything it might inspire you to learn more about etymology

Read only if you are very interested in the English language

It was an interesting book but it was very very detailed. If it were not for Bill Bryson being so funny I could not have made my way through it. The narrator did a good job but it would have been better if Bryson has narrated.

Well Delivered, but not suited for audio alone

There are some sections of this book (phonology) where it is amazing to have the words read aloud. Takes all the work out of IPA. However, there are some sections (especially orthography) that become hard to follow because the narrator must spell each word. The content is interesting until about the last two chapters. It lost me in the modern era, and is a bit outdated.

Helped and hurt by being an audio book

I hope the narrator got a bonus on this one. It must have been difficult to read as it required a lot of odd pronunciations - which is something a reader would never get otherwise. However, at times it was difficult to listen to when he spelled out sometimes dozens of individual words letter by letter. The 30 seconds forward button was helpful when it got to be too tedious. Fans of Bryson will really recognize his work once you reach later chapters on Shakespeare, cursing, and word play. My favorite sections are when he puts staunch grammarians in their place by debunking long preached rules of sentence structure. Some contemporary examples and research are a little dated since it was published in 1990, but much of the history comes from the Middle Ages so it is timeless. Worth a credit.

better if read

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

yes the content was interesting but it should be read not listened to as there is a lot of spelling words out and repeating the alphabet that just doesn't make for a good listen.

Another great book by Bryson

I read this early work after reading some of his later stuff and while I don’t love the travel logs he’s done so much, his historical analyses for the layperson like this one are really fun to read and incredibly interesting. The readers voice isn’t the best but i didn’t hate him, just not my favorite.

Fascinating!

Who knew that English had so, so much to say for itself? Polymath Bryson knew and he shares his deep knowledge of the tongue that puts you in thrall from beginning to end. I so admired the performance which brought so many non-modern English and foreign words and expressions to life with non-pareil pronunciation.

So many questions answered

This book came to me at just the right time in my life, and answered so many of the questions I have often wondered about the English language and its vocabulary. Very well written and researched. Also, the narrator did an outstanding job reading this book, which included many accents, dialects and difficult pronunciations at times.

More satire than history

Once I realized that the book is typical Bryson humor, I settled down to enjoy it. I had expected this to be a cheerful form of the History of the English Language, the sort of book like the Great Courses audiobooks by the Wheaton college professor, or one of the more academic books offered on audible, which are strictly accurate and still interesting. Bryson's book is more fun than accurate. Once I settled down and stopped trying to reconcile the things in this book presented as facts in with information in the more academic books I began to enjoy Bryson's book.

Its good to know this book is for humor, not so much for information.