The Mother Tongue - English And How It Got That Way. Instead, the language is left to academic and public figures to use and often misuse. 1-16 of 42 results for 'bill bryson the mother tongue' Results. The Mother Tongue Audible Audiobook Unabridged Bill Bryson (Author), Stephen McLaughlin (Narrator), & 1 more 6,984 ratings See all formats and editions Kindle 13.49 Read with Our Free App Audiobook 0. The proposals of national academies, such as the Academie Francaise, have generally failed as reforming tools. Too bad even Bill Bryson couldn't make this terribly entertaining. So, Bill Bryson + cheap equals insta-buy for me, apparently. The book is structured as a straightforward chapter-by-chapter examination of the origins, history, and future of the English language. Born in Des Moines, Iowa, he now lives in England with his wife and children. The Mother Tongue is the story of the evolution of the English language, from its humble beginnings as a Germanic tongue to what it has evolved into over the centuries. The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way is a 1990 work of nonfiction by American-British author Bill Bryson. One of the reasons for this, according to Bryson, is that English grammar rules are based on Latin, which has a different grammatical structure than English.Īttempts to analyze and regulate the English language go back sometime and eventually result in various organizations that left no lasting changes. Bill Bryson is the New York Times bestselling author of At Home, A Walk in the Woods, The Lost Continent, Made in America,The Mother Tongue, A Short History of Nearly Everything - winner of the Aventis Prize - and various other works.

He gives many examples of how English grammar is misused, even by academic experts on the subject. Chapter 9 Good English and Bad Summary and Analysisīryson discusses the grammatical aspects of the English language with particular attention to parts of speech and how words are used in different ways to express both different and similar meanings.

The mother tongue by bill bryson