The book is engaging, funny and full of lighthearted trivia. “ The Mother Tongue” is not a detailed history of the English language, but a light reading which is informative and interesting. Bill Bryson’s love of the English language shines through the book, even though it might seem a bit opinionated The book is a quick read and the reader can either read it straight through or jump around from chapter to chapter, or whatever picks one’s interest. While I did not find this book as laugh-out-loud amusing as Bryson’s other books, I was still glad I read it.

As a person that had to learn English as a second language, the curiosities of the structure and strangeness of spelling were always “ The Mother Tongue” is not a history book in any sense of the word, but simply a collection of amusing and fascinating pieces of trivia grouped by topic (barley though). It seemed to me that Bryson was also sympathetic to spelling reforms, which I am not against for certain words (enough…?) but feel that a great deal would be lost if we spelt words phonetically. Among many inconsistencies and illogicalities – as we all well know – the author also manages to make a case for the peculiar spelling of different words. Bill Bryce is also brave enough to tackle the bane of all English speaking people – spelling. The real meat of the book appears in the latter chapters where a large number of surprising facts appear ( Shakespeare introduced 1,685 new words to the language) as well as how the definitions of words changed over time.

The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson