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The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way
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The Role of English in the World
One of the three themes of The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way is the role of English in the world. In recent years, English has become a world language due to being so widespread across the globe. Bryson notes that “more than 300 million people in the world speak English”—but this number has increased to more than 1 billion since The Mother Tongue’s publication in 1990 (1). The reasons behind the spread of English are varied, but it is rooted in British imperialism and the contemporary roots of American economic power. Bryson explores another reason why English is so widespread in Chapter 12, where he writes that “Most people speak it not because it gives them pleasure to help out American and British monoglots […] but because they need it to function in the world at large” (207).
Bryson discusses the role of English most prominently in the book’s opening and closing chapters. In Chapter 1, he lists a variety of facts concerning the use of English in other countries to drive home the point of how widespread it is. Some English is frivolous, comprising daily American terms and phrases, while some English appears in the important matters of global corporations and international trade associations. Bryson argues that “for better or worse, English has become the most global of languages, the lingua franca of business, science, education, politics, and pop music” (2). English serves as a common language that can be used by people when their own languages do not correspond with each other.
English also makes itself known in the globalization of language education. Bryson argues that “English is, in short, one of the world’s great growth industries” (3). According to him, “such is the demand to learn the language that there are now more students of English in China than there are people in the United States” (4). The reason for this demand to learn English ties into the economic power of the United States. Having a firm grasp on English has become a path to a potentially prosperous life. Students learning English can not only further their education but take advantage of career opportunities and international business that would otherwise be unavailable.
The History of English
The Mother Tongue covers the history of the English language. Historically, English holds a unique position because of its origin as a language influenced by other languages that came about through conflict. In Chapter 4, Bryson explains that the earliest inhabitants of the island that is now Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales) spoke Celtic languages as influenced by the Roman Empire. When Roman troops withdrew after the fall of their empire, Britain was invaded by four separate Germanic tribes, each bringing their own Germanic dialect. Bryson argues that no one can say when English became a separate language, distinct from the Germanic dialects of mainland Europe, but it is “certain that the language the invaders brought with them soon began to change” (47). The result of this mixing was Old English, which would later be further influenced by the invasion of Vikings from Scandinavia and Denmark; this invasion resulted in the incorporation of Old Norse. Finally, with the Norman conquest of 1066 speared by Vikings from Northern France, English further mutated to include many French words and terms.
The book’s discussion of the history of English also includes changes to its pronunciation, grammar, and spelling. In Chapter 6, Bryson argues that “pronunciation changes are a regular feature of language” (96). One such change in England was the Great Vowel Shift, which took place between the 15-18th centuries. While no one understands why this shift happened, it resulted in English long vowel sounds changing in a “fundamental and seemingly systematic way, each of them moving forward and upward in the mouth” (97). The collecting and categorizing of English words are also fundamental to the history of English. In Chapter 10, Bryson focuses on three groundbreaking works of scholarship in the field of lexicography: Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), and James Augustus Henry Murray’s Oxford English Dictionary (1928). These works further documented and standardized the English language (especially in regard to spelling).
The Evolution of Language
Closely related to the history of English is the evolution of English. In Chapter 2, Bryson examines the dawn of language, explaining that archeological evidence indicates that Neanderthals likely had some power of speech (13). Neanderthals were eventually displaced by more advanced Cro-Magnon people, the first hominids with the ability to choke on food (13). This point is important, because “the slight evolutionary change that pushed man’s larynx deeper into his throat, and thus made choking a possibility, also brought with it the possibility of sophisticated, well-articulated speech” (13). Bryson’s discussion also includes theories on the formation of words, based on “the supposition that languages come ultimately from spontaneous utterances of alarm, joy, pain, and so on, or that they are somehow imitative (onomatopoeia) of sounds in the real world” (17). In other words, many words—English or otherwise—stem from actual, natural sounds (enabled by vocal evolution and greater observation of the natural world).
Another aspect of the evolution of English is the way in which languages gradually change in relation to geography. The most obvious example of this is Germanic blending with Celtic and later with Old Norse and French to form modern English following various invasions of Britain. In Chapter 3, Bryson argues that “the number of languages naturally changes as tribes die out or linguistic groups are absorbed. Although new languages, particularly creoles, are born from time to time, the trend is toward absorption and amalgamation” (32). He suggests that “if you drew a map of Europe based on languages it would bear scant resemblance to a conventional map” (32). On such a map, some countries would disappear (like Switzerland), others would expand (like Germany), and others would dissolve into many different language areas (like Italy and Russia) (32-33).
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By Bill Bryson
