Manybooks's Reviews > The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

I know and I do even realise that Bill Bryson is considered an entertaining author and that he also seems to be much loved and appreciated by many. However, I for one have generally and usually found Bryson’s general tone of narrational voice and the boastful, arrogant demeanour he constantly seems to present and yes indeed often downright spew in The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way extremely off-putting and really at best massively condescending, with his claims regarding the supposed superiority of the English language both unacademic and yes, profoundly bigoted and stereotyping (and as such of course absolutely devoid of any kind of linguistic acumen and actual bona fide language based knowledge). And albeit granted that English is at present a so-called and even aptly labelled world language, the reasons why English is such, the reasons why English is so profoundly popular and globally strong at present are NOT (at least in in my humble opinion) due to any type of linguistic superiority, they are primarily and simply cultural and historic in nature and also have much to do with economics and not with English being in any manner a better and superior language linguistically speaking than French, German, Chinese, Russian and so on and so on.

And quite frankly, Mr. Bryson (and if you are perhaps offended by this, sorry, but I really and truly care not), your considerations about English and that you somehow think and assume the language is somehow better, is supposedly more advanced and of higher quality than other languages, this attitude truly makes me as a person of German background cringe profoundly, as it so strongly and uncomfortably does tend to remind me of the type of rhetoric that was used in the Third Reich by Adolf Hitler and his ilk to claim and attempt to demonstrate that German (that the Germanic languages) were supposedly both linguistically and genetically superior and more advanced than other language groups and families. However, languages are simply languages and in my opinion (and actually in the opinion of many if not most academically trained linguists worth considering) NO language is thus in any manner and in any way superior and those who attempt to claim this (especially if they are categorical and unilateral in and with their philosophies) are at best profoundly naive and at worst downright and frighteningly dangerous and full of propaganda. One star (and really, with The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way, I actually almost wish I could give less than one star, and I have since reading or should I say since attempting to peruse this book actively shied away from trying any more offerings from Bill Bryson's pen, his seeming general popularity notwithstanding, especially and in particular since many of the "facts" the author has cited to cement his claims that English as a language is supposedly somehow superior to and of better and more lasting quality than other world languages are academically wrong anyhow, are not the truth or only partially the truth, and for a non-fiction linguistic tome, this just is not in any way even remotely acceptable).