Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History Of English (2008) - Plot & Excerpts
McWhorter is one of the more engaging academic writers I've had the pleasure of reading, but I still found this book a bit slow in the middle. It required just a bit more careful and attentive reading that I was willing to give at the time, which likely has more to do with my own situation than the author. Nonetheless, I found many parts of Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue compelling, and McWhorter particularly excels when lambasting, as he does with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the traditional story of English, and most memorably, folks who lord their grammatical knowledge over others. This is a terrific book by John McWhorter. If you have read his other books, you already know about him.If you haven't read his books, read this one.There are a lot of books written about English, and some are the entertaining "Isn't it nutty how we got the word 'knight'" or something amusing like that. This book is entertaining, but not as a leisurely amusement but rather as a challenge, a position the author takes and defends quite well. The author makes a well-reasoned and provocative case that somewhat goes against the mainstream History of English.The standard, vanilla theories that many can repeat on the development of English leave out, dismiss or misinterpret some distinguishing details found in English. And they aren't found in the languages which are supposed to be our ancestry languages. How did that happen?This doesn't concern some stray word that etymologists cannot pin down. This has to do, for example, with our use of the 'meaningless "do"', as in the example "Do you know what she is doing?" Essentially, the languages from which we descend say "Know you...?" The author makes a good case that this comes from an overlooked force in the development of English.The same is true with the lack of case endings (nominative, genitive, ablative...remember them from Latin class?), and with our expression of the present action. If you ask a German person who is reading a book, "What are you doing?" he will say in German "I read." Ask a Spanish person who is speaking, "What are you doing?" and they will reply "Yo hablo", or "I speak". But we don't use that construction. We say "I am reading" or "I am speaking" to express the present action.McWhorter will use the history of England that you probably already know, but haven't applied as he has, to explain where these unique grammars come from. You will have a greater understanding of our Celtic, Welsh, and even Phoenician language roots.
What do You think about Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History Of English (2008)?
English is heavily influenced by Welsh and Cornish. Oh, and grammar nazis are idiots. QED.
—charisgoingtofrance
Interesting, but not riveting. I do love words, but maybe not quite this much =)
—kimbo
gave up, audiobook is the worst way to "read" this.
—Shay
