The Mother Tongue (book)

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The Mother Tongue
Author	Bill Bryson
Cover artist	Tom Curry
Language	English
Genre(s)	Language
Publisher	William Morrow & Company, Inc.
Publication date	July 1990
Media type	Print
Pages	279
ISBN	ISBN 0-888-07895-8

The Mother Tongue (ISBN 0-888-07895-8) is a book by Bill Bryson which wittily compiles the history and origins of the English language and the language's various quirks. Subtitled English And How It Got That Way. The book discusses the Indo-European origins of English, the growing status of English as a global language, the complex etymology of English words, the dialects of English, spelling reform, prescriptive grammar, and more minor topics including swearing. Bryson's account is a popularization of the subject, designed to entertain as well as to inform, and the book is sprinkled with trivia and language lore.

This book has also been published in Great Britain by Penguin Books under the title Mother Tongue: The English Language (ISBN 0-14-014305-X).

v • d • e Bill Bryson selected bibliography Travel The Lost Continent · Neither Here Nor There · Notes from a Small Island · A Walk in the Woods · Notes from a Big Country · Down Under · African Diary Language The Mother Tongue · Made in America · Dictionary of Troublesome Words Science A Short History of Nearly Everything Memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid Biography Shakespeare: The World as Stage