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Several here have expressed the view that Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue is faulty scholarship, riddled with errors. For that view Wikipedia was cited, and one could also cite Mark Liberman in Language Log. Now, I personally disagree. Wikipedia states elsewhere, "Though Bryson has no formal linguistics qualifications, he is generally a well-regarded writer on the subject of languages." Certainly Bryson's book is imperfect, but in my humble opinion ("IMHO") it is generally reliable, and his critics are the ones being unscholarly. (I'll detail that a bit, below.) But I could be wrong, of course! I'd like to see an objective, non-heated analysis, with points supported by citation rather than by mere assertion.  Perhaps we can create that analysis here? | ||
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(continued: Liberman critique of Bryson) I agree with Mark Liberman that Bryson errs on a matter of Finnish swearing. But Liberman also makes a far more more sweeping indictment, charging Bryson with pervasive error. He states,
For further continuation, see below; comments were made before i could get this typed.This message has been edited. Last edited by: shufitz, | |||
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Oh, what a chore. It was a while ago that I heard about Bryson's Tongue, and it was on this board via Kalleh. I dutifully bought it and started to read it, but soon gave it up. (My wife somehow found it in my library and has been reading it. Of all my linguistics books, this is the one she chooses.) Pp.13f. in the US paperback edition: "The richness of the English vocabulary, and the wealth of available synonyms, means that English speakers can often draw on shades of distinction unavailable to non-English speakers. The French, for instance, cannot distinguish between house and home, between mind and brain, between man and gentleman, between "I worte" and "I have written." The Spanish cannot differentiate a chairman from a president, and the Italians have no equivalent of wishful thinking. In Russia there are no native words for efficency, challenge, engagement ring, have fun, or take care of [all cited in The New York Times, June 18th, 1989]. English, as Charlton Laird has noted, is the only language that has, or needs, books of synonyms like Roget's Thesaurus. Most speakers of other languages are not aware that such books exist. [The Miracle of Language, page 54.]" We could argue, and have, about what it means for one language to have a single word for something that another language must use periphrasis (what goes under the untranslatability argument in my mind), but let's ignore that for the second. Other languages have thesauruses. I own N. Stutchkoff's der oytser fun der yidisher shprakh: a Yiddish thesaurus published in the '50s and still in pritn thru YIVO. —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
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Here are some factual errors I found Chapter 8: Spelling, page 123:
<w> is not runic. It was orginally a digraph formed by doubling the letter <v>. Maybe he's thinking of <ƿ> (wynn), a letter of runic origin used in Old English that was eventually replaced by <w>. <þ> (thorn) was a runic letter, he got that one right. <ð> (eth) is not runic, it is just a variant of <d>. It is not used in Ireland, but it is still used in Iceland. In the first chapter, he says, when talking about how different English is from other languages: page 13:
house: la maison home: la demeure mind: l'esprit brain: la cervelle man: l'homme gentleman: le monsieur The above definitions are from the Concise Oxford French Dictionary, second edition. I wrote le passé composé: j'ai écrit (as in "I wrote a letter to you yesterday") l'imparfait: j'écrivais ("I wrote him a letter every day for five years") le passé simple: j'écrivis (used instead of le passé composé in written French) I have written le passé composé: j'ai écrit ("I have written a letter yesterday") le passé récent: je viens d'écrire ("I have just finished writing a letter") It's not that French does not distinguish between "I wrote" and "I have written," it's that it makes the distinction in different ways than English does. Also in chapter 1, page 14:
Inuit snow words Chapter 1, page 24:
This is known as the Proto-World hypothesis, and he's presenting it like it's an accepted theory. It's not. It's fringe science. Most linguists think that there is no evidence for it. He's wrong about cognates too - cognates are words that have a common origin, they don't necessarily have the same sound or meaning.This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy, | |||
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I was going to post about French having two past tenses: the imperfect (imparfait) and the perfect (passé composé), but gooofy beat me to it. If you want to read some good, and yet popular, linguistics books: John McWhorter The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language , Steven Pinker The Language Instinct, Leonard Bloomfield Language, or Edward Sapir Language. (I've chosen two relatively new ones and two older ones, but you do yourself well to read any one of them than a mountain of Bryson's Tongues.) —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
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As for not understanding how languages work... I won't defend that comment because I didn't write it. But it struck me that Bryson doesn't seem to have a grasp of linguistics, which he needs if he's going to make sense of his subject. For instance, in Chapter 6 "Pronunciation" page 86, he says there are "forty-five for purely English sounds, plus a further half dozen for foreign terms." Then he says on page 87:
He's confusing pronunciation and spelling here. It's a mistake to think that "ng" is one sound that is pronounced differently in different words. "singer" has /ŋ/ and "finger" has /ŋg/. Also, he is implying that these sounds are extra sounds, that they're over and above the accepted 45 or so sounds of English. Chapter 8 "Spelling", page 120 He says that the alphabet "is itself a pretty imperfect system for converting sounds into thoughts." What does that even mean? In Chapter 1, page 18:
His two ways are: 1. lack of grammatical gender: "what a pointless burden masculine and feminine nouns are to any language". (18) 2. freedom to not use articles:
The lack of gender and articles somehow gives English an edge. I have no idea how. I mean, what if some language has "time for bed is." Isn't that even more efficient?This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy, | |||
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As I have written elsewhere, I prefer Bryson's travel writing to his "scientific" writing. But in his defence let me bracket him with another author who has been pilloried on the boad - Lynn Truss. Neither her nor Bryson's language books are beyond criticism but they are easy to read and they are popular. I would draw a comparison between UK Red-tops and more serious newspapers. We would probably all agree that the news reporting and commentary is of a far higher standard in The Times than it is in The Sun (US readers, please provide your own comparisons) but we would surely also all agree that it is better for people to read The Sun than to read nothing at all. Similarly it is surely better for the less literate to read Bryson and Truss than it is for them to read no English grammar and usage books. Richard English | |||
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(continued; Wikipedia critique of Bryson) Wikipedia lists 19 alleged Bryson-errors,¹ but for only a few does it give a citation to the alleged Bryson text or to the alleged refutation. This alone strikes me as poor scholarship. Obviously one must check the 19 claims of error, but there are a few preliminary questions. The basic one is, "If indeed there are 19-or-so errors in this book, is that a bad record or – given the volume of facts cited – a rather good one?" Nobody is expected to be perfect; inevitably there will be some errors by Bryson, by the authorities he relies upon, and by his printer. Subsidiary questions include:
¹Wikipedia's conclusion reads as follows: "Bryson is a storyteller, not an academic. Moreover, he seeks to entertain as much as to inform, and he relies on some outdated or questionable sources. The Mother Tongue's factual errors have attracted criticism from those looking for a genuine introduction to linguistics pitched at a readable level, [no citation given] as the book's presentation in an authoritative voice leads one to expect. Its erroneous assertions include:" [19 alleged errors follow.] | |||
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Similarly it is surely better for the less literate to read Bryson and Truss than it is for them to read no English grammar and usage books. Well, neither Bryson nor Truss have written any grammar or usage books. If they need to read a usage book, I would suggest Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. It's cheap, it's in print, and it's a real dictionary of English usage. For general books on language that were written for a popular audience and by people who knew something about the subject matter, I've posted four such books above. —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
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How refreshing! I will mainly be a reader of this thread because I don't know as much about Bryson as obviously the rest of you do. I have read some of his books, and I like him, but that's about as far as it goes. I am sorry that I had induced you to buy Bryson's Mother Tongue, zmj. I must not have understood the breadth of your linguistic knowledge at that point. Richard, can we stay away from comments like: "Similarly it is surely better for the less literate to read Bryson and Truss than it is for them to read no English grammar and usage books." and "I would draw a comparison between UK Red-tops and more serious newspapers." I find those to be insulting comments, not based on any facts, and certainly not in the spirit of this thread (or board for that matter). There, now I will sit back and read! | |||
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Gooofy, could you edit to add citations, to both the Bryson text and your refutation? I don't doubt that you have citations, but putting them here would make it easier to analyze and comment. Thanks! Kalleh, honey, I don't find Richard's comments offensive or off-point. I read them as going to a legitimate question: "What degree of accuracy and detailed distinction is expected of a book of this sort?" | |||
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Bryson has. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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For the record I've enjoyed all of Bryson's books including his language ones. I have noted a number of errors here and there (in the travel ones too) but put much of it down to his expressing opinions rather than facts. (Granted he doesn't always make that clear.) He is a good populariser and I think Richard has a point. His books, like Truss's, are not aimed at serious students of linguistics, they are aimed at the guy in the street and if they encourage an interest in literacy and language in people who otherwise would have none then surely that is a good thing. Yes, there are factual errors and I think he would benefit from getting an expert in the field to check them over before publication but they are nevertheless an interesting and enjoyable read. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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Wikipedia's alleged error #14: "[Bryson says] That felix is Latin for cat. (felix means lucky; felis' means cat)" Fact: Bryson says no such thing. text search shows that he never uses the word felix. He does say (at 274), "Cat in classical Latin was feles (whence feline)". OED agrees with him. | |||
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I'll do my best. I copied these passages out a while ago, and in order to get page numbers I'll have to borrow the book again. You make a good point about how the Wikipedia article doesn't provide citations. I shouldn't have linked to it as if it was an authoritative source. My point is that he makes some huge factual errors, doesn't understand the difference between phoneme and grapheme, and claims that English is superior to other languages just because he thinks it is. How can we trust anything he says? | |||
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Incidentally factual errors aren't limited to Bryson. In his series and book The Adventure of English, broadcaster and journalist, Melvyn Bragg, who is usually well regarded, promulgates a number of well known urban myths (including the alleged slave ship origin of "nitty-gritty") which clearly he and his researchers have simply accepted from other unreliable sources without checking. No one is immune from the occasional bit of faulty research. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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You can save yourself the trouble. Just use the search-inside-the-book feature on the book's Amazon page (at the left, a bit below the picture of the book). It's fairly easy -- but it might be available only to Amazon customers. If you can't use it, let me know by PM, and I can find the Bryson cites so that you can edit them in. I can't help you on the refutation-cites, though. | |||
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Bryson has. Bob, great. Another Bryson book, I'll have to buy.  —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
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That just goes to show the power of perception. I read those comments, and a few others here, as saying: You are a stupid fool to read Bryson. Fortunately I am a literate reader who reads the more erudite literature.Of course, that's embellishing a bit, but you get the point. And I had promised myself that I'd not comment anymore.  | |||
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I did enjoy The Mother Tongue. It is at times very entertaining. I just don't trust anything in it. Actually that's not all. I'm in awe at how misinformed Bryson is. If his aim was to teach people about English, I don't think he succeeded. On the other hand, the book may encourage an interest in language, as Bob says.This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy, | |||
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You are a stupid fool to read Bryson. I don't think I said that, or implied it. I just don't think that Bryson's Mother Tongue is a good, popular, language book to read. (And, for the record, I don't regret having bought the book, I just don't think it's a very good book, and it's occupying a space on my library shelves right now as I type.) I was sure you and shu, as professionals, know how annoying it is to see some popular book, with enough errors and misrepresenting its subject matter, being praised. —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
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Boy, these misunderstandings about who said what and about whom do just keep on piling up don't they? As I understand it, please feel free to correct me, Kalleh wasn't suggesting that you (zmj) had, she was saying that she had misinterpretted Richard's remark (which was meant to refer to the general public and target audience of Bryson's book) as being aimed at people on this site. As for "Troublesome Words", it's fairly entertaining and might help people who don't already know that imply and infer are different, but is extremely unlikely to tell you anything you don't already know. (And yes, I know that you weren't going to buy it anyway. )"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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Maybe the term "grammar or usage books" was not an impeccably accurate description of Bryson's "Mother Tongue" or Truss's "Eats, shoots and leaves". However, they are both books about English and English grammar and I suspect have been read by far more lay readers than have John McWhorter's The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language , Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct, Leonard Bloomfield's Language, or Edward Sapir's Language. As I tried to say, with limited success, I think it is far better for people to read the likes of Bryson and Truss than it is for them to read no books about language at all. That Bryson and Truss have not written for English language experts and academics is maybe a fact, but I don't feel it should be a criticism. Richard English | |||
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Maybe the term "grammar or usage books" was not an impeccably accurate description of Bryson's "Mother Tongue" or Truss's "Eats, shoots and leaves". However, they are both books about English and English grammar and I suspect have been read by far more lay readers than have John McWhorter's The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language , Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct, Leonard Bloomfield's Language, or Edward Sapir's Language. And more people drink Bud and enjoy it than Fuller's Pride. But we both know that that doesn't make Bud a good beer, or even beer. Language is my beer, Richard. Why can't you understand that? Because thousands read Truss and Bryson doesn't make them right. The books I mentioned are as popular as and better written than Truss and Bryson. —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
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Gooofy, take a look an your "ng" point above, in the context of Bryson's previous paragraph. ("The American Heritage Dictionary lists forty-five for purely English sounds, ... But ... there are many more than this.") I think you'll find that Bryson is simply saying that the "ng" combination can have two different sounds, as you note (bang/binge; hang/hinge; sang/singe; finger/ginger), but that AHD's count only lists one of them. zmj, you say "he's presenting it [the Proto-World hypothesis] like it's an accepted theory." But as I read his language, he says "possible links" and "leads some linguists to conclude" [emph. added]. I don't view either of these as "errors by Bryson". Edit regarding first paragraph, after reflecting on gooofy's and zmj's comments: My examples were wrong, but I think my point's correct. As zmj notes, the letters ng in a word can represent different sounds or combinations. So OED supports Bryson's statement that there are more individual sounds than just the 45 which AHD lists.This message has been edited. Last edited by: shufitz, | |||
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The digraph "ng" can represent three different sounds, or series of sounds, in English: as in singer, finger, and binge: a velar nasal /ŋ/, a velar nasal followed by a voiced velar stop /ŋg/, and a alveolar nasal followed by voiced alveolar affricate /nʤ/. —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
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That they are better written is, I am sure, perfectly true. But although I don't have the figures I take leave to doubt that they are more popular. Lynn Truss's book topped several best-seller lists and made her a millionaire. So far as the Budweiser versus Fullers analogy is concerned, I would sooner people drink Budweiser, foul though it is, than drink no beer at all. Budweiser drinkers may graduate to better beers; teetotalers will never do so. Richard English | |||
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Good grief, zmj! Richard just said there are circumstances in which he'd drink Budweiser and a falcon, towering in her pride of place, was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd. Strange days indeed. Ah, misread his post. He said he'd sooner other people drink Bud than no beer at all. Not as close to the end of the world as I thought. Phew. I was worried there for a minute.This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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It seems inaccurate to me. These different sounds aren't additional English sounds that the AHD ignores; they are all listed in AHD's list.
Fair enough for the second one. I think it means he has more research to do, though. | |||
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Strange days indeed. Yes, weird scenes inside the goldmine. zmj, you say "he's presenting it [the Proto-World hypothesis] like it's an accepted theory." But as I read his language, he says "possible links" and "leads some linguists to conclude" [emph. added]. I don't think I said this. I think it was gooofy. —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
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Chapter 6 "Pronunciation", the American first edition
The symbol is /x/ and it's velar, not labiodental. Now I see that in the new edition (page 93) he's fixed this. page 187:
India has 23 official languages. page 15
I don't know about German, but French expresses the present continuous with "en train de": "je suis en train de chanter." And French can express the emphatic nature of "I do sing" with "je chante vraiment." page 19:
This is not an error. Or is it? It's very silly, at least. Other languages do have the sort of complexity that English does. English is not special in this regard. Imagine trying to explain to a non-French speaker what que means.This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy, | |||
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In a country [India] in which there are 1,652 languages and dialects, including 15 official ones... According to Ethnologue database, "[t]he number of languages listed for India is 428. Of those, 415 are living languages and 13 are extinct." —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
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I used the word "perception," Bob, not "misinterpret." I meant that Shu and I perceived the comments differently. This has been a good discussion, and I think there are some distinctions. First, what is an acceptable error, and what is not. Second, some of this is opinion, and while opinions are based on facts, we might disagree on what constitutes a reasonable conclusion from the facts. Here was one error that Wikipedia pointed out that never existed, but that no one here mentioned. I trust all of Language Log's critiques, but just as Gooofy says he doesn't trust Bryson, I just don't trust Wikipedia. | |||
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It is possible that like the voiceless labiodental fricative, felix was in the earlier edition but has been removed. Having said that, I don't trust Wikipedia either. But I feel pretty confident about the links I've used in this thread. | |||
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[Note: my post of Jan 04, 2007 1:42 PM has been substantially edited.] Responding to some claims of "Bryson error", I put some detail is white type, so that those who want a shorter version can easly have it. Claimed error: Bryson says, "The lack of gender and articles somehow gives English an edge." I have no idea how." Response: Bryson (19) calls this a "small edge for English," and he explains it (and I agree) in the language that follows. "Anyone who spent much of his or her adolescence miserably trying to remember whether it is 'la plume' or 'le plume' will appreciate just what a pointless burden masculine and feminine nouns are to any language. In this regard English is a godsend to students everywhere." Claimed error, at 120: "He says that the alphabet 'is itself a pretty imperfect system for converting sounds into thoughts.' What does that even mean?" Response: Bryson explains it (and I agree) in the language that follows. "We have some forty sounds in English, but more than 200 ways of spelling them. [one page of further examples] I trust you get the point that English can be a maddeningly difficult language to spell correctly." Claimed error: "[He] claims that English is superior to other languages … " Response: He makes no such claim, and in fact he goes to a great deal of trouble to reject it Specifically (13-18): He notes three reasons others have given for such a claim ("It is often said that" … "A second commonly cited factor" …. "A third … supposed advantage of English"), and he provides supporting and refuting data for each. His conclusion? "… natural bias plays an inescapable part in any attempt at evaluation. … So objective evidence, even among the authorities, is not always easy to come by. Most books on English imply in one way or another that our language is superior to all others. [example citation, from Burchfield] … I can't help wondering if Mr. Burchfield would have made the same generous assertions had he been born Russian or German or Chinese. There is no reliable way of measuring the quality or efficiency of any language." [emph. added]. Claimed error: Bryson says that India has "languages and dialects, including 15 official ones." But Wikipedia puts the number at 23. Response: Wikipedia elsewhere confirms Bryson's figure of 15 (scroll down a bit to the "Assamese" heading). In any event, Wikipedia counts the languages having official status as of today, not as of the time Bryson wrote. Claimed error: Bryson says that India has "1,652 languages and dialects," but ethnologue says, "The number of languages listed for India is 428." [emph. added] Response: Naturally the numbers differ: one, but not the other, includes dialects. The distinction is not easy to draw (Bryson 37), and thus counting "languages only", which requires that distinction, tends to be subjective. | |||
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I never said this was an error, and I'm sorry if that's the impression I gave. My point was that he doesn't understand his subject matter. It's insulting to call gender a pointless burden, and also inaccurate, since it is clearly not pointless for the languages that have it. Also, it's misleading to say that lack of gender makes English easier; it might make that aspect of English easier to learn for ESL students, but other aspects, like phrasal verbs , are very difficult.
I also didn't say this was an error, altho it is. The alphabet does not convert sounds into thoughts. The alphabet, and orthography in general, is a system for representing a language using written symbols.
Then he says in the next sentence, "Yet there are one or two small ways in which English has a demonstrable edge over other languages." This seems to contradict the claim that "There is no reliable way of measuring the quality or efficiency of any language."
This site says 23. Who knows.This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy, | |||
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I'm a little lost. It seems to me that AHD and OED say the same thing: there is a velar nasal phoneme /ŋ/, found in thing, and there is a voiced velar plosive phoneme /g/, as in gag . And in the word finger, the velar nasal is followed by the velar plosive: /ŋg/ - that is, two consecutive phonemes. Both the velar nasal and the velar plosive are listed in AHD's list. But Bryson says that there are more sounds than those listed in AHD's list, and says that /ŋg/ is one of those sounds. Now if by "sound" he means "whatever collection of phonemes I want to talk about," then maybe he's right. But to me that means he hasn't done his research.This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy, | |||
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Actually I have drunk Budweiser and many other beers of that ilk. Had I not done so, how could I comment accurately on them? Unlike many of those who post their critical, and frequently ungrammatical, comments on boards such as the Oxford bottled beer database, I never claim that such and such a beer is the best (or the worst) in the world. I might say that I think it it is foul, or the finest I have ever tasted - but would never use a superlative about its overall position in the beer hierarchy. With over 2000 fine beers brewed in England alone, how could I possibly judge ultimate superiority? Richard English | |||
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Responding to A single sound may be represented by single character or by a digraph – but either way, it is a single sound. For example, the th in 'thin' is a single sound (rather than a t-sound plus an h-sound), which OED represents with the character [θ] and AHD represents with the digraph [th]. (How do we confirm that it is not a t-sound plus an h-sound? By noting that if it were, it would not need a separate entry in the dictionaries' pronunciation-guides; the [t] and [h] entries would suffice.) Let's follow the same reasoning with the ng sound in finger. You say it is two consecutive phonemes: an [ŋ] followed by a [g]. OED does not agree with you. If it did, its pronunciation guide would have entries for [ŋ] and for [g] but would not need a separate entry for the sound in finger. But in fact in does have such a separate entry, thus indicating that this sound is single sound (represented the digraph [ŋg]) rather than simply an [ŋ] followed by a [g]. Now, to repeat my point. AHD and OED agree that the ng in singer is a single sound (not a two-sound combination) and they also agree that the ng in finger is a single sound (not a two-sound combination). Their point of disagreement is that AHD thinks the finger sound is the same as the singer sound, while OED thinks the two differ. OED hears two different sounds in the two words, while AHD hears only one. Thus OED supports Bryson's assertion that there are more distinct sounds than AHD lists.This message has been edited. Last edited by: shufitz, | |||
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I am not aware of a phonological analysis of English where /ŋg/ is one phoneme. Look how AHD transcribes finger: fɪng'gər In IPA this is fɪŋ.gɚ The syllable break comes between the ŋ and the g. In AHD notation, between the ng and the g. They are separate phonemes. I don't know why the OED lists it as a separate sound. How do they transcribe finger?
the velar nasal in singer AHD: ng OED: ŋ the velar nasal plus velar plosive in finger AHD: ngg OED: ŋg OK, I think I see what you're saying. I can see how if Bryson didn't know much about English phonology, he might be lead into thinking that /ŋg/ was a discrete sound.This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy, | |||
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Probably a "typo." How effing magnanimous of you. Yes, we all occasionally (and that includes you) make mistakes. The rest of us are just human. How would you like a job? You can be the editor of all posts here on the board. That way you can correct everybody's mistakes. Of course, it doesn't pay much, but then you aren't doing it for pay then are you? It gives you that last little frisson of pleasure on your way to the cemetery. —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
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gooofy, I agree almost entirely with your last post on singer/finger. As to the small area of disagreement … well, some seem to find this a touchy subject, so let's agree to disagree, and let's drop the matter (or go to PM, if you want to continue it). You asked how OED renders finger. You'll find it here; the relevant line reads
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In southern UK English the sounds are different. The ng in "singer" is one sound; in "finger" it is two. But in some parts of the UK (and I assume the USA) the ng in "singer" is pronounced the same as it is in "finger". I would imagine that the OED is using the southern English pronunciation ("BBC English" as it was once known) and AHD using whatever is considered "correct" US English. Richard English | |||
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Personally, I think we should step away from this discussion now. It's becoming too heated and too personal. Now everyone shake hands (The Americans can hug if they really want to) and be friends again. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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As I said in the bit I crossed out, the pronunciations given in the AHD and the OED are the same in terms of the consonants. They just use different transcription conventions. | |||
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