Books and Authors brushes off the dust from an entertaining history of the English Language first published in 1991

“More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to”, says Bill Bryson in his ode to the English language titled, The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way.

Famous for his tongue-in-cheek wit and immensely readable style — described by one critic as energetic, quirky, familiar and humorous — Bryson is that rare writer who can take the driest subject and turn it into a riveting read. After all, this is the man who tackled such scintillating topics as quantum mechanics, particle physics and the Big Bang, yet made it to the bestseller list with his magnum opus, A Short History of Nearly Everything.

Of course, in the case of Mother Tongue the subject matter — the evolution of the English language — is fascinating enough to begin with; in Bryson”s expert hands it becomes a delightful treat.

Of course, the English we speak today bears scant resemblance to its ancient roots and in tracing its evolution we learn the answers to some questions that have plagued every non-native English speaker (and many native ones, too). For example, why is it that an animal in the field is a cow, a sheep or a pig but when cooke  d and brought to the table it becomes beef, mutton or bacon? Or why is the plural of foot, feet rather than foots? And where, oh where did all those silent letters come from?

That English has a complex, schizophrenic even, personality, is obvious to everyone who has puzzled over the inconsistency of its pronunciation (where tough rhymes with puff but not with cough), the multiple meanings carried by a single word (where cleave can mean cut in half or stick together) and the illogical rules of its grammar (why something can be unseen but never unvisible).

The reason for this can be traced to the successive invasions and conquests that buffeted England while its mother tongue was still in the developing stage. From the Danish and Scandinavian Vikings to the French Normans, each invading group laid their mark on the language. However, unlike other regions where the conqueror often succeeded in wiping out the native tongue and imposing its own, the Old English of the Anglo Saxons survived and grew richer with each successive assault. Not only did it eagerly accept new words but, at times, even grammar form. “The pronouns ‘they’, ‘them’ and ‘their’ are Scandinavian… an early demonstration of the remarkable adaptability of English speakers”, says Bryson and claims that due to its extensive vocabulary, it is the only language that “has or needs books of synonyms.”

But it was not just the invaders who messed with the language; according to Bryson, “in the 17th century … certain well-meaning meddlers began fiddling with the spellings … in an effort to make them conform to a Latin ideal.” Thus, even today, we are forced to put a ‘k’ in know, a ‘b’ in debt and an ‘s’ in island. The same is the case with grammar; many of the rules grammarians hold sacred — never split an infinitive, never end a sentence with a preposition — were modelled on Latin principles, which, as Bryson puts it, “is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football.”

But Mother Tongue is more than just an exploration of the history of English; it is a comment on its present role as a global language — “there are now more students of English in China than there are people in the United States” — and a look at where it is headed. Along the way we get some delicious morsels of information; for example, the fact that “Shakespeare used 17,677 words in his writings, of which at least one tenth had never been used before.” Thanks to the Bard we now use words like majestic, obscene, critical, barefaced and several others without thinking, for a moment, how poor our vocabulary would have been without his contribution. Oh, and those have a fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of their mouth, now have a word to describe it: arachibutyrophobia! Or so Bryson says.

There are places where the pace of the book begins to drag and at times one wishes the author had not gone into so much detail, especially when he compares other languages, rather unfavourably, to English. But overall, for all those who love English in spite of its contradictions and absurdities, Mother Tongue is a book that speaks their language.

Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way
(LANGUAGE)
By Bill Bryson
Penguin Books, London
ISBN 978-0-14-014305-8
270pp. Rs720