Mother Tongue - Bill Bryson

This is one of my more interesting references for my Masters´ Dissertation.

I know Bryson enjoys a large following, and a number of people kept recommending his books to me. I eventually got round to reading Notes from a Small Island and although easy to engage, it didn´t take long for him to irritate like a bad dose of haemorrhoids and his humour as predictable as a last minute goal for Manchester United.

However, Bryson does come up with a lot of interesting stuff on the English language, if rather poorly organised in his approach. A few favourite tidbits include: -

The revised Oxford English Dictionary records some 615,000 words,
The German equivalent boasts about 184,000 commonly used words and the French version just 100,000 words.

Onomatopoeic words also diversify with a cultural spin. For example, whilst English dogs “woof”, French dogs say “ouá-ouá”, Italian mutts “bu-bu” , “muang-muang” in Korea and “wan-wan” in Japan.

Shakespeare used 17,677 words in his writings in which one tenth had never been used before.

My favourite chapter however, is on swearing.
There are no native swear words in Japanese, Malayans, most Polynesians and American Indians.
High order insults include:
“Devil” in Norway
“Turtle” in Chinese
“Your Mother´s ears” in Xoxa tribe, South Africa
And “camel” in French

Arse, fart and tits were all in common usage by the 10th Century

An Act of Parliament in 1623 made swearing illegal in Britain, and in 1649 the law was extended so that swearing at your parents could become punishable by death.

The Independent newspaper was the first British paper to print the word c*nt (without the asterisk) in 1988.