The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way
by Bill Bryson
Dedication
To Cynthia
Acknowledgments
Among the many people to whom I am indebted for help in the preparation of this book, I must single out Jonathan Fenby of The Guardian, Tony Sikkema of the London Sunday Times and Dr. Takasuke Matsuo of Osaka, Japan, for generously assisting with questions regarding, respectively, the French, Dutch, and Japanese languages; Miles Kington of The Independent for kindly allowing me to reproduce two holorimes in the chapter on wordplay; Professor Robert Fulk of Indiana University for his careful reading; my mother, Mary Bryson, for providing a constant stream of clippings and other material; the staff of the Camden Public Library in London and of the Drake University Library in Des Moines for guiding me to sources that I would not otherwise have found; and above all, my wife, Cynthia, for her endless help and support.
Certain passages in this book originally appeared in somewhat altered form in TWA Ambassador magazine and in the Canadian textbook Language in Action, and I wish to thank both organizations for permission to reproduce those excerpts here. In this regard I must also thank Laurence Urdang for helping me (alas, so far without success) try to track down the person who passed off one of these articles as her own in at least three publications in Europe and America, including Mr. Urdang’s own esteemed quarterly, Verbatim.
To all of these people I send thanks—except, of course, the elusive plagiarist, to whom I address one heartfelt raspberry.
1. The World’s Language
More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to. It would be charitable to say that the results are sometimes mixed.
Consider this hearty announcement in a Yugoslavian hotel: “The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid.
Turn to her straightaway. ” Or this warning to motorists in Tokyo: “When a passenger of the foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet at him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage, then tootle him with vigor. ” Or these instructions gracing a packet of convenience food from Italy: “Besmear a backing pan, previously buttered with a good tomato sauce, and, after, dispose the cannelloni, lightly distanced between them in a only couch. ”
Clearly the writer of that message was not about to let a little ignorance of English stand in the way of a good meal. In fact, it would appear that one of the beauties of the English language is that with even the most tenuous grasp you can speak volumes if you show enough enthusiasm—a willingness to tootle with vigor, as it were.
To be fair, English is full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner. Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman’s apparel is clearly asking to be mangled. Imagine being a foreigner and having to learn that in English one tells a lie but the truth, that a person who says “I could care less” means the same thing as someone who says “I couldn’t care less,” that a sign in a store saying ALL ITEMS NOT ON SALE doesn’t mean literally what it says (that every item is not on sale) but rather that only some of the items are on sale, that when a person says to you, “How do you do?” he will be taken aback if you reply, with impeccable logic, “How do I do what?”
