{"id":255,"date":"2004-02-22T22:18:40","date_gmt":"2004-02-23T03:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=255"},"modified":"2004-02-22T22:18:40","modified_gmt":"2004-02-23T03:18:40","slug":"bryson_bill_mot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2004\/02\/bryson_bill_mot\/","title":{"rendered":"Bryson, Bill: Mother Tongue, The"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue<\/cite><\/strong> is the first of his non-travel books, and one of two about the English language (Made in America<\/cite> is the other). Like the rest of his books, this was perfect before-bed reading: interesting and amusing, to clear my mind, but not much in the way of narrative drive, to keep me awake too long.<\/p>\n

Nearly every page of this book has something good on it, that I want to write down or tell someone about. Just the first chapter includes: a Danish word that means “instantly satisfying and cozy,” hygge<\/cite> (anyone know how to pronounce that? I think we need to adopt it); a “Highlands Scottish” (Scots Gaelic?) word for “the habit of dropping in at mealtimes,” sgiomlaireachd<\/cite>; and an introductory discussion of why English is so flippin’ hard<\/em>. This last was very relevant this week, as I did paper-torture with an intern at work: some things I could explain, or hand over photocopies from Woe Is I<\/cite> and The Elements of Style<\/cite>, but for a few, I had to resort to, “I’m sorry I can’t adequately explain why this is wrong. Just trust me.” Flipping through later chapters, I’ve lighted on the assertion that Shakespeare created approximately 1,700 words; a mention of a Broadmoor inmate’s tens of thousands contributions to the original OED<\/cite>; and a discussion of the British crossword which reminds me why I just skip past most of the Wimsey short story “Uncle Meleager’s Will.”<\/p>\n

If you’re reading this, you obviously care at least somewhat about language. Therefore, you ought to read this book. Go on, I’ll still be here when you get back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue is the first of his non-travel books, and one of two about the English language (Made in America is the other). Like the rest of his books, this was perfect before-bed reading: interesting and amusing, to clear my mind, but not much in the way of narrative drive, to keep … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Bryson, Bill: Mother Tongue, The”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,9],"tags":[144],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-non-fiction","tag-bryson-bill"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}