According to Google, almost 1.5billion people speak English in the world in 2023. A greater number would probably speak English to some capacity, even saying “Hello. How are you? I’m fine thanks. And you?” just like any Cambodian children with working vocal cords would greet any foreigner. But English isn’t really a practical language and Bill Bryson knows that. And as someone who had to learn English as a child (my mother tongue is Indonesian), and then having to teach it in Cambodia, I would agree with old mate Bill that English as a language is a bit of a cunt.
Mother Tongue is everything to do around, about, concerning, regarding the English language: its birth and history, its etymology, its quirkiness, the ways non-native speakers are using the language and butchering to comedic heights, and the future of the language, which spoiler alert, seems to be in safe hands now more than ever. And though it reminded me of my linguistics class that I took a long time ago so I can hang out with my uni friends, English has a rich and confusing history with its own wealth of narrative.
No, it is not essential to know the story of the language if you’re ever learning it. I never really knew how French or Indonesian came to be, but as a language enthusiast, the study of languages reveal much to us about our own natures. So here are five things that I learned from Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue about the language you’re reading right now.
- The origins of English is as clear as London on a foggy day
We all know that English is a Saxon language, that it is much tainted by French when they were the rulers of the land for some time about a millennia ago. But its roots come from a different tribe, now the obscure Anglians and the Jutes. Surprisingly, there is a community of speakers somewhere in Germany whose language resembled what the native English would have spoken a thousand years ago.
The 300,000 or so Frisians spoke a form of the Anglian language which was the early form of English, mixed in with some tang with the Jute people, perhaps the original Londoners. From northern Europe, the Anglians and Jutes conquered the British Isles, settled there, and then disappeared into thin air. This remains a linguistic mystery to this day and the debates are endless. So let’s leave the history to the buffs.
2. We tend to bastardise our own language
Languages evolve, that’s clear. But if we trace back the origin of some words, we’d be surprised of how they were used or pronounced way back when. We won’t know now how people would have spoken back then, but we do have some clues, like how some words rhyme in old English poems (Chaucer was instrumental to aid linguists on this).
For example, the Normans who spoke French in old England used words such as quit, question and quartier with the “u” sound skipped so that these words would sound like “ki”, “kes-tiong” and “kar-tee-yer”, but those damn Saxons saw the “u” and pronounced it and that’s how we speak it now. There are more examples of this, but you should just read the book hay.
3. English is as rich in variety as your ex-girlfriend’s personalities
Another interesting fact: only about 4,500 Old English words survived, but they remained essential to our modern tongue: man, child, wife, brother, live, fight, love, sleep and so on. But for some words that we know and love, we can use the one word with multiple meanings, which makes English more complex yet all the more rich. There is a terminology for this phenomenon, as there is for most of linguistic phenomenons, and it is called polysemy.
Polysemies are great if you’re a writer. You can mask saying the same word using another one, and it’s gonna give you variety. Sound is notorious for this: it can mean a noise, being good, or some geographical body of water. Not to mention the all important “fuck” that can be used in a hundred different ways and is still evolving.
4. English is more pretentious than you might think
This is of course, because of its hoity-toity French roots. But perhaps we can blame the old England’s history for that. There is a divide between the ruling class, the Normans, compared to those down below who would speak in their native Saxon tongue. Some of the more humble occupations would take words from the Saxon origin: baker, miller, shoemaker; whilst “higher” occupations would take the French words: mason, painter, tailor.
This phenomenon also applied to animal etymology — animal names would take Saxon names, but once cooked, the French takes over. Because you know, it’s animals in its higher forms. So sheep and cow are converted to mutton and beef. Chicken remains chicken however, so I guess the Norman elites back then didn’t like chickens. Let’s not forget that French words take up about 40% of words in English, and to this day, we still see it as an elite language. A bit pretentious but.
5. Bryson may not be as accurate as we think he is
Go through the Goodreads review of the book and you’re going to easily find many incensed readers telling you that what Bill said just ain’t right. For example, a slightly irritated young lady who refuted Bryson’s claim that the Finns don’t swear at all, but apparently they swear like they’ve got Tourette’s. Or how Welsh, though it looks unpronounceable, is actually straightforward once you’ve got the hang of it. There are less irregularities between the phonetics and the way the language is written, thus the language is more comparable to Spanish.
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I won’t go too deep into all the examples though. Most of what Bryson collected makes sense and it is still a very sound work of linguistics, which is always a tricky subject. The book started off interesting, as I learned heaps of new things about this language that I’ve been speaking for most of my life. But the latter parts of the book I really couldn’t care less — the varieties of English, how English is used overseas, et cetera. Maybe it is interesting to other readers, but it is a repeat of my linguistics class from my first year uni and I’ve been living in countries where most people struggle with the language.
Mother Tongue is not an advertisement or a defence of the English language — it is the deep analysis into the labyrinth and mapping it out in a landscape that keeps changing. And you know what? Even getting the tip of the iceberg of this gargantuan language is an admirable feat nonetheless.
