Analysis Of The Mother Tongue

Summary and Critique: The Mother Tongue- English & How It Got That Way

The author, Bill Bryson, briefly introduces and describes the history of English. In this book, The Mother Tongue, Bryson uses an interesting way and scholarly manner to guide readers through the various linguistic and social movements in the English language, the center of the world language as well as the export of manufactured goods. He gives different kinds of instances by comparing with various languages to present how the language merged together of interacting. After a short introduction, Bryson gives puzzles to hook readers’ curiosity, why and how the words form, and where does language come from at the beginning. He studies the origins of language through past times

English possesses the ability to make new words by fusing compounds. Next, the author provides abundant examples of pronunciation change. The situation occurs between Britons and Americans, but even between Britons and Britons. It is helping to mark the social, cultural, and orthoepic

Tang 2 differences. The varieties of English indicate where you come from. The linguistic conventions distinguish one language users from another. Bryson uses interesting questions to describe spelling issues and how it goes varying records because most of our spellings supply to a wide variation of pronunciations. It also gives rise to a problem that people who want to define the quality of English language and written communications between nations would become practically impossible.

Bryson provides the ample information of historical and linguistic detail about linguistic studies, and dictionaries of the English language. Time to time and in one country from the other, the English language are changing and used differently about 4,000 words. Bryson states the English language moved into the center of the world as the example of education and to compare with other

Readers can tell that the author uses the plenty of information as the linguistic tricks and quizzes to hook readers’ appetite for further knowledge such as “why do we spell four with a u and forty without”(Bryson 20). He skillfully utilizes the linguistic differences and characters to attract readers’ curiosities. The book is a rich composition. On the other hand, the author’s point of view in the book set up the central stage for the greatest language, the English language. In the first chapter, Bryson presents the English language stands on a higher hill to compare with other

Tang 3 languages. His statement gives readers an uncomfortable feeling as a bias to look down on other languages. For instance, Bryson states that English is, one of the world’s great growth industries.

The book on the oriental language as Chinese, Japanese, or minority groups have a lot of prejudice and misunderstanding. There is one of the errors to present the author’s misunderstanding.

In page eighty-six of the book, Bryson indicates that “Chinese takes this matter of self-denial