Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling

You know, my father used to drive people crazy by complaining that so many words in the English language are not spelled the way they sound. Well, it turns out that my father was in good company. Throughout the history of the English language, many great men of letters complained about spellings, and have sought to reform the language to make it easier to understand. In this fascinating book, author David Wolman tells the tortured and twisted history of the English language, and the many attempts to reform its spelling. Overall, I found this to be a very interesting book. The author takes what could easily have been a boring subject, and makes it come alive, as he tells of his own peregrinations as he works to unravel the history of why we spell words the way we do. It was so interesting, the way that men fought bitter and usually unsuccessful battles to change spelling, while often it changed of its own accord, unmarked and unheralded. This is a very interesting book on what turns out to be a very interesting subject. If you are interested in the written word, then you really should get this book. I highly recommend it!

This is a fantastic book for anyone that has ever read The Professor and the Madman. The history and state of language is a fascinating three nights of reading for anyone, regardless of whatever genre you usually find yourself immersed in. Written in a reminiscent tone of a Docent leading you on a Museum tour through the ever changing landscape of the English language, Wolman speaks to the reader directly in a sometimes wry and sometimes dry narrative, but nothing too troublesome. I was able to quickly get through this as I was fascinated by how certain words have evolved and what the language is currently facing with the ever changing world of the internet, text messaging and the American public at large. While this is a very fascinating book and I whole-heartedly give it five stars, I would also recommend the following examples of what encapsulates some of Wolman's concerns: 1. The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary 2. The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms 3. Urban Dictionary: Street Slang Defined 4. Depraved and Insulting English 5. The Highly Selective Dictionary For The Extraordinarily Literate 6. The Oxford Dictionary of Allusions 7. How Not To Say What You Mean: A Dictionary of Euphemisms

I thoroughly enjoyed this brief, well-written history of the development of English spelling and its often bizarre conventions. While the thread that ties the chapters together is the spelling of English words, the author successfully incorporates fascinating bits of linguistics, cultural and social history, and biography to bring his subject to life. The author's style is fresh and engaging and the book is very readable and in fact difficult to put down. I've read many books about linguistics and language history, and most suffer from a scholarly tone that sometimes borders on the pedantic. This book is a welcome change from that, and will appeal both to the general reader as well as those of us who love reading about language and language change. While the author is not a professional linguist, he includes footnotes for each chapter and it's obvious that he researched his topic before writing the book. Highly recommended!

This is a great book if you are a logophile or just like fun little bits of history. It is a quick tour of the vagaries of the evolution of spelling in the English language, and it packed some tasty surprises for me. As a lover of words, word origins, and such, I fell in love with this book in the first few paragraphs. Wolman writes about what could be a very dry subject to some, but manages to be interesting and engaging. It was hard for me to put this book down. From the school-age tortures of spelling and spelling bees through a quick history of printing and dictionaries, to the current battles over email and texting, Wolman acts as our guide, showing us seldom mentioned influences in English orthography (spelling). In the process, he is entertaining as well as informative, not an easy mix. I was surprised to learn how much influence Dutch printers had on the standardization of spelling in English. There are many more such tidbits of interesting history in here, and I found myself thinking about English and language in whole new ways. I like it when someone can create new perspectives for me, and Wolman opened my mind up, big time. This was an enlightening and entertaining read, and I heartily recommend it if you love words, history, or related subjects. Wolman adds another dimension to a Harry Truman quote that I find more and more relevant every day - "The only new thing is the history you don't know."

...and most of us--even those of us who love etymology--aren't that crazy about reading dictionaries. That is part of it. The other is the getting of the history of words with a dictionary is haphazard at best. Along comes "Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling." I know of no other book quite like it. I love June Casagrande's Mortal Syntax: 101 Language Choices That Will Get You Clobbered by the Grammar Snobs--Even If You're Right and Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies: A Guide to Language for Fun and Spite and even Lynn Truss's unforgiving British take on punctuation, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. I remember reading a book on the origins of the alphabet back in the early 60s. This, however, is the only one I know that capsulates the history of spelling (more or less). I found it funny and disturbing. (I don't suppose one expects a book on spelling to be disturbing.) But take the word "e-mail." As an editor I've been fighting to keep the hyphen because the word is short for electronic mail and the hyphen preserves that origin. There! There on the cover is "e-mail" spelled "email." Guess I'm fighting a losing battle. Which, after all, is the point of this book. Don't let the fact that you now know the point keep you from reading it. If you love words and history, you'll be entertained. Thank you, David Wolman. ----- Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, UCLA Extension Writers' Program instructor and author of The Frugal Editor.