Mother Tongue
... by Bill Bryson.
I would certainly recommend it to all those who feel confident with their grammatical terminology... I am not sure though on whether I would recommend it to those who actually struggle with it, as, more than a pleasure, it could become a pain to read.
It is like an abridged David Crystal's "Encyclopaedia of the English Language", full of fantastic anecdotes and chitchats about the language which make the reading quite worth it. Furthermore, it empathises with the difficulties immanent to the English language, as the author puts himself in the shoes of a prospective language learner - and as language learners, the flexibility and randomness of certain areas of the English language does flabbergast us in ways that the readers have never noticed. This is one of the main pluses of this book: it makes English people think about their language and realise how easy they've had it for being natives.
Its only flaw may lay in the fact that such a small book can never really deal in depth or clearly with all of the linguistic features that it presents here and there, in a bit of a haphazard manner - and I have to acknowledge that at times I felt slightly confused by the sudden jumps from one concept to the other. Nevertheless, and regardless of all the theoretical stuff that lies beneath, it is an entertaining book which thus achieves its seeming target: to allow everyone to read about grammar and enjoy it.
As my memory is pretty bad, I will not remember many of the fabulous stories that it tells to entertain my guests at the dinner parties I may throw in the future, so I'll better pass on some to you, so that you can use them in your dinner parties.
On American English pronunciation and Slurvian:
The Americans at it again, on multilingualism within the USA:
Examples of the phenomenon of Amphibology (construct ambiguous sentences that can be taken in either of two ways):
"Customers who think our waiters are rude should see the manager" "Thak you so much for the book. I shall lose no time in reading it" (232)
And Bush's art of speech, explaining why he would not support a ban on semi-automatic weapons:
Which is nevertheless matched brilliantly by Vice-President Quayle's speech for a Thanksgiving Festival:
I would certainly recommend it to all those who feel confident with their grammatical terminology... I am not sure though on whether I would recommend it to those who actually struggle with it, as, more than a pleasure, it could become a pain to read.
It is like an abridged David Crystal's "Encyclopaedia of the English Language", full of fantastic anecdotes and chitchats about the language which make the reading quite worth it. Furthermore, it empathises with the difficulties immanent to the English language, as the author puts himself in the shoes of a prospective language learner - and as language learners, the flexibility and randomness of certain areas of the English language does flabbergast us in ways that the readers have never noticed. This is one of the main pluses of this book: it makes English people think about their language and realise how easy they've had it for being natives.
Its only flaw may lay in the fact that such a small book can never really deal in depth or clearly with all of the linguistic features that it presents here and there, in a bit of a haphazard manner - and I have to acknowledge that at times I felt slightly confused by the sudden jumps from one concept to the other. Nevertheless, and regardless of all the theoretical stuff that lies beneath, it is an entertaining book which thus achieves its seeming target: to allow everyone to read about grammar and enjoy it.
As my memory is pretty bad, I will not remember many of the fabulous stories that it tells to entertain my guests at the dinner parties I may throw in the future, so I'll better pass on some to you, so that you can use them in your dinner parties.
On American English pronunciation and Slurvian:
"Both (American and British English), are equally prone to slur phrases - though not necessarily the same ones. Where the British will say howjado for "how do you do", an American will say jeetjet for "have you taken sustenance recently?" and lesskweet for "in that case, let us retire to a convivial place for a spot of refreshment". This tendency to compress and mangle words was first formally noted... by one John Davenport who gave it the happy name of Slurvian (...). In Baltimore (pronounced Balamer), an eagle is an "iggle", a tiger is a "tagger", water is "wooder", a power mower is a "paramour", a store is a "stewer", clothes are "clays", orange juice is "arnjoos", a bureau is a "beero", and the Orals (Orioles) are the local baseball team" (82)
Official lingo and other examples of linguistic spinning (184):
"An involuntary conversion of a 727" - plane has crashed as described by an airline
"A negative patient-care outcome" - death of a patient as described by a hospital
"Wooden interdental stimulators" - toothpics, as per the Pentagon's Department of Food reports.
And for all those that complain about the European Union regulations, here's some more of that Pentagon Dept. of Food Procurement stuff that surely makes wars sooo easy to wage:
"An involuntary conversion of a 727" - plane has crashed as described by an airline
"A negative patient-care outcome" - death of a patient as described by a hospital
"Wooden interdental stimulators" - toothpics, as per the Pentagon's Department of Food reports.
And for all those that complain about the European Union regulations, here's some more of that Pentagon Dept. of Food Procurement stuff that surely makes wars sooo easy to wage:
"Specifications for a regulation Type 2 sandwich cookie: 'The cookie shall consist of two round cakes with a layer of filling between them. The weight of the cookie shall be not less than 21.5 grams and filling weight not less than 6.4 grams. The base cakes shall be uniformly baked with a color ranging from not lighter than chip 27885 or darker than chip 13711... The color comparisons shall be made under north sky daylight with the objects held in such a way as to avoid specular refractance'." (184)
The Americans at it again, on multilingualism within the USA:
"As one congressman quite seriously told Dr David Edwards, head of the Joint National Committee on Languages, 'If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for me'." (190)
Examples of the phenomenon of Amphibology (construct ambiguous sentences that can be taken in either of two ways):
"Customers who think our waiters are rude should see the manager" "Thak you so much for the book. I shall lose no time in reading it" (232)
And Bush's art of speech, explaining why he would not support a ban on semi-automatic weapons:
"But I also want to have - be the President that protects the rights of, of people to, to have arms. And that - so you don't go so far that the legitimate rights on some legislation are, are, you know, inpinged on." (240)
Which is nevertheless matched brilliantly by Vice-President Quayle's speech for a Thanksgiving Festival:
"I suppose three important things certainly come to my mind that we want to say thank you. The first would be our family. Your family, my family - which is composed of an immediate family of a wife and three children, a larger family with grandparents and aunts and uncles. We all have our family, whichever that may be" (241)
OK, I do commit my own little Spoonerisms from time to time, so I should not be too evil with some of the oratorial peccadilloes of our American friends... So I shall leave you to decide whether you will go ahead and read this book.
(All blatantly copied sections, with page reference on each, in case you are too lazy to read the whole book, have been taken from the Penguin edition 1991, which, by the way, wrongly says that "a bottle being emptied goes gloup-gloup in China, tot-tot-to in Spain" (16) ... that is what I call a blatant editorial Spoonerism)
