Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English

It is hard reading in places but a very good read for students of our language.

I'm a language book nerd from way back, and familiar with the issues McWhorter tackles in this book - the odd usage in English of recruiting "do" as an auxiliary verb ("Do you like fish?"), and the odd present-progressive ("I am writing a review.") Nonetheless, I learned a lot new here. Both of these usages are rare around the world, very rare. McWhorter does a good job of explaining the scholarly debate, and his own view... Read Full Review

This unique analysis certainly isn't included in most college courses. The author argues certain unusual features in English grammar come from Welsh. He argues they are undocumented in ancient records since no one wrote in Welsh, and the only early written English was a non-conversational, formal form. He further argues most modern English scholars don't know enough (or care enough) about Welsh to see the forest for the... Read Full Review

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter (Gotham Books) is the most entertaining book about linguistics that I've read. As a teacher and writer, I love English and its quirks, but I never could get my mind around all the charts, graphs, and jargon of formal linguistics. This book gave me a nice language fix without sounding like a calculus text. It's relevant to mention that McWhorter is black, because a racial subtext... Read Full Review

Linguist John McWhorter in his latest work advances a very well argued contrarian view of the development of the English language. The prevailing conventional view is that changes in English over time principally involve just the addition of new words from Latin, French, and, in the ages of exploration, words from everywhere. The conventional view rests centrally on the "hard evidence" reflected in surviving writings. Very... Read Full Review