Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue

There have been many "histories of English" published over the decades; a quick search using those keywords finds over 1 million on Amazon.com. I myself have read several of the well-respected and well-rated books on the subject. But McWhorter's Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue focuses on issues in the history of the English language that other authors either gloss-over or ignore. While most histories of English describe the differences between Old, Middle and Modern English as basically adding a massive amount of vocabulary and losing a bit of complexity, McWhortner focuses on peculiarities of English grammar that other authors ignore and then explains how and why those peculiarities came about.

Have you ever wondered why we insert "did" in sentences like I did not find it.? Or perhaps you've wondered why we have a present progressive -ing ending on verbs (I am writing the letter), when so many other European languages are content in saying I write the letter. McWhorter puts forth a good theory about how these nuances may have been Celtic influences.

In five main chapters, McWhorter presents these topics and many others. While some of the material presented can get confusing at times (writing about language is not as easy as it sounds!), it is definitely a great read. Even if this book fails to convince, it will certainly make you think.

 

[steph]

this is about the 3rd time that ive heard or seen this book and with every time i have to remind myself that i have bills to pay and i cant go run to the bookstore and get it. I want it, i want it sooooo bad!!!!

 

[Copernic]

Fascinating

I got a taste of this with Charles Berlitz's Native Tongues and just picked up Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language by McCrum.

English is a mongrel language and I counter the charge that few Americans speak another language by saying that in some way, we speak all of them.