He Does Know What He's Doing

You and me, as English speakers, do not really know why we're saying what we're saying, because English really is, as John McWhorter tells us, a magnificently bastardized language. So he's going to explain why you "say" something but he "says" it, why he doesn't believe what "they" say about language and culture (for example, why its says nothing about us if we identify our silverware as masculine, feminine, or gender neutral), and why you should not be "frightened" by the idea of German orphans having originated in ancient Phoenicia.

OK, that all sounds rather obtuse. That's because I'm trying to cram into those two run-on sentences a number of concepts McWhorter covers in his book -- why it's OK to say "you and me" instead of "you and I", why we use the word "do" so much when it doesn't actually mean anything in that context, why we say "we're saying" so often instead of "we say" (and how we would sound like Yoda if we spoke English the way most other Germanic languages are spoken).

And he explains why we say "they" so much when we mean "he" or "she" (and why only "he" or "she" have an "s" at the end of their verbs), why we say "going to" to indicate the future (and that the first written instance of this usage in Shakespeare literally meant the act of "going to" do something), why our nouns don't have genders as in Spanish or German, and how some words with ambiguous etymologies (like "frighten") may have come into our language from as long ago and far away as ancient Phoenicia.

And McWhorter does it all without getting too academic, despite being a professor of linguistics, and in an entertaining tone, which he himself narrates (although I was put off on two or three occasions when there was a little laugh in his narration when he was contradicting other linguists or linguistic theories). I found myself repeating many of his examples to friends and family during the time I was listening to the book and afterwards.

I vastly prefer fiction to non-fiction, but every once in a while, I enjoy a good work of non-fiction, and I've come to believe that such books, when not too weighty in subject matter, make for good audiobooks. If you're interested in a subject like how the English language evolved, with influences as broad as Welsh, Cornish, Old Norse, French, Latin, and maybe even Phoenician, and what it says about culture, then and now, I would highly recommend this book as an easy, entertaining, and illuminating listen.

55 people found this helpful

Great for casual linguists

For those with only a passing interest in the history of English, I recommend "The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language". It's a more casual overview of the English language that focuses more on history and vocabulary (a very good listen).

That being said, "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue" is a great listen for those interested in the origins and evolution of the English language told not only through history and vocabulary but also through grammar and linguistics.

Don't freak out, the treatment of grammar is fairly straightforward and mostly limited to examples of case endings or nouns having genders. This will be familiar to anyone who has studied a Romance or Germanic language. (Basically, the Vikings helped kill off our case endings)

Etymologies tend to be fairly straightforward too, e.g. the author provides examples of how sounds from Indo-European words (e.g. "peter" (can't do the correct symbols) tend to change in fairly predictable ways in various languages, cf. Latin "pater" or French "pere") to Old Norse "fadir", or Germanic "vater" (pronounced "fah-ter").

That's about as scary/difficult as the etymologies get.

There is also a big chunk of a chapter dedicated to unique English peculiarities like our use of the (mostly) meaningless word "do" (e.g. "this doesn't work" instead of "this not work") and our use of "ing" to convey a present state of doing something, rather than just the present active indicative ("I'm typing" instead of "I type") (The Celts are responsible!)

The author also addresses how and why written English was different from spoken English, the theory that language shapes the way we think (he mostly disagrees), and the Semitic influences on the proto-Germanic language.

158 people found this helpful

There is no need to argue...

The information was great, but the author wrote the entire book as if he was responding to a linguistic theory that he disagreed with, constantly referring to how his argument refutes the standard theories. Unfortunately, I am not familiar with the standard theories and would have greatly appreciated if he had simply stated his own case convincingly instead. Frankly, the most frustrating part about it was how easy it would be to simply edited out the arguing parts. They were neither informative nor helpful and were thus, completely superfluous.

32 people found this helpful

Oh the joy!

Now this book made sense to me. I love the history, but the story of the language in syntax and context was so much more compelling than just the etymologies,I could have listened to twice this book. I was very interested that this was read by the author, excellent job, the foreign pronunciations in all dialects were astounding and just plain fun to listen to.

63 people found this helpful

Enjoyable, Entertaining and Educational

Any student of English even, if just elementary school grammar, knows English is weird. This book help explain why and how it got that way. I loved this book.

I tutored English as a Second Language for a couple of years and I wish had known some of this before starting to tutor. It would have made explaining some of the quirks about English easier.

I enjoyed the narration as well. John McWhoter is enthusiastic about is work and that comes through to the listener.

41 people found this helpful

Brilliant Linguist makes his case

Not many authors read their own work very well, but McWhorter is superb - and who else could read snatches from so many languages and get them right (or at least plausible!)? The content of the book is outstanding. McWhorter makes his case for the strong Welsh influence on English despite the low number of Welsh words, and when he gets to the Carthaginian influence on ancient proto-Germanic, I was delighted. Unlike many scientists, McWhorter never overclaims; where the evidence is thin and the ideas are speculations, he says so and never lets you forget it. When you're through listening to this book, you understand the bones of our language better than ever.

59 people found this helpful

A great find for language nerds

Any additional comments?

I was excited (and convinced) by the author's thesis that Old English was influenced by Welsh. It's a revolutionary idea, since most scholars who study Germanic languages ONLY study Germanic languages, but it's a very convincing explanation of one of English's peculiar quirks.

Whereas many "history of the language" titles deal mostly with etymologies of words and phrases, McWhorter is concerned mostly with grammar--notably, the differences in grammar that set English apart from other Germanic languages. For that reason, it might be heavy going for people with a casual interest and little knowledge of linguistic terminology. But the author's tone and wit help to keep it interesting. My husband, who has no background in linguistics but is curious about many topics, enjoyed it and got something out of it.

28 people found this helpful

Fascinating. No, really.

I don't know how boring I must be to become so engrossed in a text about the history of English grammar, but I was rapt nonetheless. McWhorter makes some good points and backs them up, but is realistic about the chances of his conclusions being adopted by the linguistics community.


A book so dependent on the way words are pronounced SHOULD be read by a linguist and fortunately McWhorter is a very good narrator. He sounds neither dry nor melodramatic. My only complaint is that when speaking Japanese his accent is almost as bad as my own, but given the number of languages referenced he does an admirable job of delivering phrases from such a wide range of sources.

42 people found this helpful

Interesting

Interesting concepts that I hadn't heard before. The author reads his own book. He had to since there are lots (i.e. a few too many) spoken examples from various languages. Nevertheless, the author renders his ideas clearly and humorously.

16 people found this helpful

Magnificent 'Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue'

This book was fabulous! And read by the author! Really, nobody else could have read it with all the original language references. Besides that, the content was tremendously interesting written in an extremely easy-to-understand and skillful style that showed the author's tremendous knowledge on the subject as well as his good sense of humor. I would recommend this book to anyone.

20 people found this helpful