Билл Брайсон (Bill Bryson )The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson
Dedication
To Cynthia
Acknowledgments
A mong the many people to whom I am indebted for help in the preparation of this book, I must single out Jonathan Fenby of The Guardian, Tony Sikkema of the London Sunday Times and Dr. Takasuke Matsuo of Osaka, Japan, for generously assisting with questions regarding, respectively, the French, Dutch, and Japanese languages; Miles Kington of The Independent for kindly allowing me to reproduce two holorimes in the chapter on wordplay; Professor Robert Fulk of Indiana University for his careful reading; my mother, Mary Bryson, for providing a constant stream of clippings and other material; the staff of the Camden Public Library in London and of the Drake University Library in Des Moines for guiding me to sources that I would not otherwise have found; and above all, my wife, Cynthia, for her endless help and support.
Certain passages in this book originally appeared in somewhat altered form in TWA Ambassador magazine and in the Canadian textbook Language in Action, and I wish to thank both organizations for permission to reproduce those excerpts here. In this regard I must also thank Laurence Urdang for helping me (alas, so far without success) try to track down the person who passed off one of these articles as her own in at least three publications in Europe and America, including Mr. Urdang’s own esteemed quarterly, Verbatim.
To all of these people I send thanks—except, of course, the elusive plagiarist, to whom I address one heartfelt raspberry.
1. The World’s Language
M ore than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to. It would be charitable to say that the results are sometimes mixed.
Consider this hearty announcement in a Yugoslavian hotel: “The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid. Turn to her straightaway.” Or this warning to motorists in Tokyo: “When a passenger of the foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet at him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage, then tootle him with vigor.” Or these instructions gracing a packet of convenience food from Italy: “Besmear a backing pan, previously buttered with a good tomato sauce, and, after, dispose the cannelloni, lightly distanced between them in a only couch.”