Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson

So, along with writing travel books (which I love) Bill Bryson is a journalist and editor and is somewhat of an expert on the English language. In this book he explores where English - that mongrel language - came from. If you take a look at English, especially if you know anything about any other languages, you can see that it has very strange grammar, pronunciation and spelling. And of course the reason is that it comes from so many different places. Not least it is a mixture of Germanic and Romantic languages with grammar that has been borrrowed from Latin. Add to that the way we don't seem to pronounce anything as we spell it, or have, in the case of the -ough ending about 8 different ways to pronounce it - it is an absolute wonder that anyone manages to master it as a foreign language. And yet they do.

There was another of those "OH!" squawks from me as I read it during a section on place names because Oughtibridge (where my parents live) got a mention with, apparently, 4 pronunciations. That is something that I can directly check out next time I'm there.

But I also have to mention that I don't agree with everything Bryson writes in this book, but that just goes to show how language evolves. I also spotted one or two spelling mistakes (admittedly, one was in a German word) which annoyed me.

Generally it was very interesting to read this one, I've previously read Melvyn Bragg's The Story of English which was rather excellent (I got the impression that Bryson didn't like that book)

The biggest problem with this novel is that it really concentrates and focusses on the similarities and differences between British and American English - which is obviously where his expertise lies. But I'd like to have seen a lot more discussion about Australian, New Zeland, Canadian and South African English to start with.

The other thing is that at a distance of a little over 20 years since this book was read we have experienced the communication explosion that is the internet and a whole lot of us are communicating in English with people who speak a very different dialect, or speak English as a second or third language. That means we're exposed to a lot of different aspects of the language compared to people who will have read this book when it first came out.

But it was an enjoyable read and I can recommend it to anyone who is interested in languages generally, and the English language and its development specifically.

Travels With My Donkey by Tim Moore

Travels With My Donkey by Tim Moore was a Christmas present from Gruesome #1. I love travel writing and have recently added Tim Moore to my collection of books by Bill Bryson and Charlie Connelly. The first of Moore's that I read was Do Not Pass Go and it's a trip around the Monopoly Board for real, trying to work out why Waddingtons picked the streets and stations they did when they licenced the game. It was most excellent.

In this one, having heard about the Way of Saint James (the Camino Santiago, which I know as the Jakobsweg, having first heard about it in German). This is the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela which is supposedly the last resting place of St James, the patron saint of Spain. The route begins just over the French border - anyone with a passing acquaintance with European geography knows that this also means just over the Pyraneees.

Over the last decade or so the popularity of this pilgramage has increased and many people undertake it by foot. Some go on bicycles. A few take donkeys and, thinking that if it was good enough for Jesus it would be good enough for him, Tim Moore decides that if he is going to do the walk, it has to be accompanied by his very own beast of burden.

Out of the three writers I've mentioned, Moore is my least favourite, but he does provide rib-ticklingly, belly-laughinly funny prose. He, in common with Charlie Connolley though, seems to start out for his trek woefully under prepared and that tends to annoy me at times, funny though the results can be.

Another reason, apart from a fairly recently acquired passion for travel writing, for reading this one is that - as a family - we have been thinking of tackling the trek to Santiago de Compostela. Not for any religious resasons but becuase as an established long walk it's "relatively" straightforward. Also it doesn't matter how long you take, we plan to do it in stages if we ever get started, as long as you collect all the Scallop Shell stamps in your pass, you get a certificate of acomplishment when you finally get to the cathedral at Santiago.

Moore also mentions a couple of other books about this pilgrimage, including a totally madcap one by Shirley McLaine which I'd like to try.

Being about a third of the way through this book at the moment I can offer one criticism, albeit a small one. Moore does tend to overcomplicate his language and I'm not sure why.