Let's Parler Franglais! par Miles Kington

This book reminds me of countless afternoons spent at the dentist's surgery as a schoolgirl. I was at boarding school and, at Red Maids at least, the custom was for the boarders to have their appointments (after the check-up which was carried out at school) on Wednesday afternoons. There would typically be five or six of us, and we'd go together either with a matron if we were all young ones, or in the charge of one older girl.

And there we'd sit, waiting for our turn.

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.