Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars | 669 ratings

Price: 17.46

Last update: 11-16-2024


About this item

A survey of the quirks and quandaries of the English language, focusing on our strange and wonderful grammar. Why do we say "I am reading a catalog" instead of "I read a catalog"? Why do we say "do" at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue distills hundreds of years of fascinating lore into one lively history.

Covering such turning points as the little-known Celtic and Welsh influences on English, the impact of the Viking raids and the Norman Conquest, and the Germanic invasions that started it all during the fifth century A.D., John McWhorter narrates this colorful evolution with vigor.

Drawing on revolutionary genetic and linguistic research, as well as a cache of remarkable trivia about the origins of English words and syntax patterns, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue ultimately demonstrates the arbitrary, maddening nature of English - and its ironic simplicity due to its role as a streamlined lingua franca during the early formation of Britain. This is the book that language aficionados worldwide have been waiting for. (And no, it's not a sin to end a sentence with a preposition.)


Top reviews from the United States

—
5.0 out of 5 stars Finally! The reasons WHY we speak the way we do!
Reviewed in the United States on November 6, 2009
Finally! Finally! Finally! Someone with a brain has used a scientific approach to sort out exactly why we speak English in such a funny way when compared to other European languages!

I've always wanted to know why English has no (or no longer has) masculine or feminine (or neuter) nouns. WHY?! Every other European language has them (or most of them, anyway -- 2 out of 3 ain't bad).

Unlike other languages we don't change an adjective to match the gender or number of the noun it's describing. Unlike other Germanic languages we don't tweak nouns to denote whether they're a direct or indirect object.

And then there's the ever superfluous "do" and the way we go about "-ing"ing all the time:

"What did you say you're doing today?"
"I said I'm singing, Fay." (Hey, at least it rhymes.)

Although other European languages have a present progressive tense, speakers don't use it unless they want to stress what it is they're doing to some dolt who didn't hear them the first time or doesn't know what singing is.

But then there's the way we us "do" all the time. I never had the privilege of studying Welsh or Celtic so I thought this strange grammar was unique to English, but I knew it didn't exist in any other Germanic language so I always wondered WHY we do what we do when we speak. NOW I KNOW!

I haven't finished the book yet so I hope Mr. McWhorter explains whey we always "will" do things in the future. Why do we say "will" when other languages adjust their verb endings to indicate future tense? Is this also from Welsh and Celtic influence?

What astounds me is how scores of linguists have dismissed this influence for well over a century. Although Mr. McWhorter doesn't think it's bigotry I do; the English have always looked down their noses on, well, just about everybody! They made a concerted effort to kill the Welsh language and have done their best to obliterate Gaelic from Scotland and Ireland. Whether they admitted (or admit) it or not, I'll be most linguists both living and dead view these neighboring tongues as simply inferior.

And not only is Mr. McWhorter's book THE MOST INFORMATIVE BOOK ON THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGAUGE but it's also a fun read, amusing and humorous. It is not a stale scholarly work but rather and exciting scholarly work that brings English of the past alive with evocations of warrior Vikings who didn't just practice hit-and-run guerilla warfare (though they did plenty of that in Britain and elsewhere in Europe) but stayed in England and settled down, married and raised families. And, thankfully, butchered English into a grammatically simpler language.

Too bad they're not around today to wrestle all our ludicrous spellings into submission. Maybe I'll start the ball rolling:

Tu bæd ðær ar no Vikingz arønd tuday tu tame Englic.

OMG! I just invented NEW ENGLISH! I mean NU ENGLIC!

(I'm using the useless 'c' to represent our 'sh' sound, just so ya know. I originally had a more phonetic spellings but Amazon's text abilities are, apparently, limited. But hey, it's a start!)
gary medlock
4.0 out of 5 stars Persuasive-though at times almost too persuasive
Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2011
In Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, it seems Mr. McWhorter is enjoying himself. While this is usually indicative of an author's appreciation for his subject and his ability to impart his knowledge of that subject to his audience, Mr. McWhorter has another motive at play. He seems, at times, to enjoy bringing an unorthodox grammar history to the reader, but even more so, he revels in such unorthodoxy's seeming requisite jabs at fellow critics whose ideas he's undermining and whose conservative linguistic pomposity he's attacking. Such attacks' circumstances work themselves out quite nicely. Mr. McWhorter presents a position that runs contrary to the mainstream, identifies why the position is more logical than the mainstream's position, and then writes off the mainstream position as simplistic or ignorant or merely entrenched in static academic thought. The most frequent critique of such conservative linguists (e.g., David Crystal) is his simple (and, I presume, simplistic) summation of their explanations of various English language changes: "it just happened." While I am no academic linguist, and, of Mr. Crystal's works, I've only read his Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, it is difficult to believe that Mr. McWhorter's ideas can be quite so revolutionary as he makes them out to be, though his arguments for the influence of Welsh and Norse influences of Old English are very persuasive. A bit too persuasive, actually. Such persuasiveness leads me to the belief that Mr. McWhorter overstates either his argument's uniqueness or its evidence. Thus his ideas aren't so unique, because who could overlook such obvious evidence and his subsequent logical deductions, or, despite what appears to be the overwhelming nature of his evidence, the preponderance of the (unseen in this book) evidence actually runs against his claims. Nonetheless, Mr. McWhorter's efforts at convincing me, especially of the influences of Celtic on English, have not fallen on deaf ears. I am keen to adopt several of his hypotheses, yet I will look further for the other side of the argument (i.e., conservative, mainstream linguists). That I am so eager to do so is a testament to my appreciation of Mr. McWhorter's book.

Best Sellers in

 
 

Write for Your Life

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 386
11.81
 
 

The Old Money Book: How to Live Better While Spending Less: Secrets of America's Upper Class

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 1438
13.08
 
 

Take Control of the Noisy Class: Chaos to Calm in 15 Seconds

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 1436
17.46
 
 

Summary: Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

0 0 out of 5 stars 0
5.45
 
 

How to Get Back Up: A Memoir of Failure & Resilience

3.3 3.3 out of 5 stars 6
26.16
 
 

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 5338
19.68
 
 

The History of the English Language, 2nd Edition

4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 7
36.71
 
 

The Art of Reading

3.3 3.3 out of 5 stars 5
29.66