The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

by Bill Bryson

No one has ever said, “Yes, my language is backward and unexpressive, and could really do with some sharpening up.”

I say this regularly.

Of all the Indo-European languages, Lithuanian is the one that has changed the least—so much so that it is sometimes said a Lithuanian can understand simple phrases in Sanskrit. At the very least, Lithuanian has preserved many more of the inflectional complexities of the original Indo-European language than others of the family.

In English adjectives have just one invariable form with but, I believe, one exception: blond/blonde.

Quinquennial describes something that lasts for five years or happens only once in five years.

Fortnightly

Sweetheart was originally sweetard, as in dullard and dotard.

Asparagus was for 200 years called sparrow-grass.

The process can still be seen today in the tendency among many people to turn catercorner into catty-corner and chaise longue into chaise lounge.

a girl in Chaucer’s day was any young person,

St. Paul’s Cathedral he called it amusing, awful, and artificial, and meant that it was pleasing to look at, deserving of awe, and full of skillful artifice.

the word for the study of pronunciation in English, orthoepy, can itself be pronounced two ways.

Thunder originally had no “d”

lord was loafward,

fortnight (a word curiously neglected in America) was fourteen-night.

In a similar way, pilots long had difficulty in distinguishing between five and nine until someone thought to start using the more distinct fiver and niner.

although some have never truly settled, such as roof and poof, which some people rhyme with goof and others pronounce with the sound in foot.

J. R. R. Tolkien, later to become famous as the author of the Hobbit trilogy,

Erm, technically…

Attempts to simplify and regularize English spelling almost always hav a sumwut strānj and ineskapubly arbitrary lūk abowt them, and ov cors they kawz most reederz to stumbl.

They roundly castigated those ignoramuses who impurely combined Greek and Latin roots into new words like petroleum (Latin petro + Greek oleum).

Many scholars have taken the trouble (or more probably compelled their graduate students to take the trouble)

Vespucci himself preferred the name Mundus Novus, “New World.”

traffic circles in Britain were called gyratory circuses.*

Jefferson also coined the word Anglophobia; little wonder.

Consider that in Britain the Royal Mail delivers the post, not the mail, while in America the Postal Service delivers the mail, not the post.

As one congressman quite seriously told Dr. David Edwards, head of the Joint National Committee on Languages, “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for me” [quoted in the Guardian, April 30, 1988].

while an Eagle and Child denotes allegiance to the Earls of Derby

The Bird and Babe, as it were.

A wine merchant would always have a bush by his front door. Hence his neighbor might end up being called George Bush.

Smith is the most common name in America and Britain, but it is also one of the most common in nearly every other European language. The German Schmidt, the French Ferrier, Italian Ferraro, Spanish Herrero, Hungarian Kovacs, and Russian Kusnetzov are all Smiths.

Kennedy, means “ugly head” in Gaelic,

By a similarly convoluted process Eboracum eventually metamorphosed into York.

Nova Eboracum

Curiously this does not hold true for the obscure town in Nottinghamshire called Gotham, from which New York City takes its nickname; the locals pronounce it “Gott-hum.”

Yucatán in Mexico means “What?” or “What are you saying?”—the reply given by the natives to the first Spanish conquistadors to fetch up on their shores.

“Thou art Peter: upon this rock I shall build my Church.”

Petro pun

“two plus eleven” and “one plus twelve” not only give the same result but use the same letters?