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Why do we say "I am reading a catalog" instead of "I read a catalog"? Why do we say "do" at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, author McWhorter distills hundreds of years of lore into one lively history. Covering the little-known Celtic and Welsh influences on English, the impact of the Viking raids and the Norman Conquest, and the Germanic invasions that started it all during the fifth century AD, and drawing on genetic and linguistic research as well as a cache of trivia about the origins of English words and syntax patterns, McWhorter ultimately demonstrates the arbitrary, maddening nature of English--and its ironic simplicity, due to its role as a streamlined lingua franca during the early formation of Britain. This is the book that language aficionados have been waiting for.--From publisher description.… (more)
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And many of the references and explanations were clipped or nonexistant - like when he wrote that because of all the modern Germanic spellings of "daughter," linguists can figure out that the original Proto-Germanic word was daukhtro. And then he moves on! Whoa - I want to know how they know that. I felt like I had missed the introductory course and was now in 201.
All in all, despite interesting tidbits, the book read more like an academic persuasive essay, better suited to linguists themselves than to curious lay-people.
Along the way, McWhorter lists and rebuts the various reasons other scholars don't accept (or might not accept) his hypotheses. This uncovers some additional interesting points about language and linguistic research. Such as the trouble of inferring what people's spoken language was like in a time when few people could write, and writing used the formal (rather than the colloquial) language of the time. But I also found these debates quickly grew annoying. As a reader who is not personally familiar with the current scholarship in linguistics, it was never clear whether McWhorter was rebutting active criticisms of his work, anticipating future objections, or merely refuting the reasons scholars have never, till now, considered these points. And since McWhorter is obviously on one side of any of these debates, it's hard to know how well he is representing the opposing view points.
McWhorter also devotes a chapter to using his view of the evolution of English to argue against the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, the idea that our thinking and behavior are influenced by the characteristics of the language we speak. I have to infer that this topic is something of a sore point for McWhorter, because it really felt a bit out of place in the book. Or maybe the problem is that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis strikes me as utter nonsense, and hence I would need to see a lot of supporting evidence for it---especially for the stronger forms of cultural influence McWhorter says it argues for---before I would find any counter arguments interesting or necessary.
Along the way, there are lots of interesting tidbits about language. Like many language writers, McWhorter takes some time out to poke holes in some of our notions of "correct" speech, and offers lots of interesting analogues and examples for a wide range of other languages, including both the commonplace (Russian, Frence, etc.) and the unusual (Frisian, Cree, et al.)
Overall an entertaining and educational read, especially if you're interested in how English got to where it is today, or in languages in general.
I'm not sure if McWhorter's arguments about the Welsh and the Vikings are convincing, but he does seem to have a valid point when he says that studies of the history of English have been too tied up with statistics on words and etymologies and have not paid enough attention to the really weird things about modern English compared to other languages, like the two present tenses, the "meaningless-do" in questions and negative statements, and the absence of grammatical gender and extreme simplification of verb-forms. In the light of recent research on language-contact elsewhere in the world, he argues that these are developments typical of what happens when a lot of non-native speakers use a language. And he points out some interesting parallel features in Welsh grammar.
The weakness in his position is that there is no written evidence for any of these things until the boom in written Middle-English in the thirteenth century, many centuries after the contacts he's talking about. Can that really be explained away by scribal conservatism? Maybe, maybe not. But it's certainly not something that any non-professional reader of this book is going to be in a position to judge. Generally, when I see a popular book setting out an "academics have been getting this wrong for decades" argument, I'm looking for a very high standard of proof, and that doesn't seem to be on offer here.
The book is written in a strange Brysonic dialect of English, but without most of Bill Bryson's precision and conciseness. McWhorter is obviously a broadcaster first and a writer second: on paper his mixed metaphors and rambling sentences are cruelly exposed to view, and his American colloquialisms look forced rather than spontaneous. And they are often very provincial. As a non-US reader I had to keep stopping to decode obscure references to sports, TV and brand-names.
As a pedant I can’t stop here. So just some petty criticism without substantial weight.
1. Call me humourless but I don’t need cheap jokes to read a scientific book. When he cites Shakespeare he does not need to tell me that Shakespeare did not refer to “Sports Illustrated” when he mentions a “magazine”.
2. “Ich tue vielleicht den Sack aufschneiden” is not an “option”, not even in a grammatical sense. That’s a sentence you would only tolerate coming from a toddler, but it just isn’t German even if all the single words are correct.
3. How to proof that the Phoenicians were in Germany and/or Denmark to teach us idiots good Phoenician grammar? One of the Phoenician Gods was called “Baal”. And one of our Germanic Gods was called “Balder”. Not exactly compelling if you consider that the Phoenicians as well as the Gotes had hundred of Gods and it would be more astounding if there were not two of them with similar names
A noteworthy reminder for the modern reader is the fact that language was transmitted purely orally and on the fly, with no formal schooling in existence and was almost never put in writing, with the bulk of the population being illiterate, besides which written and oral versions of languages were often vastly different (for example, Latin exclusively in many Mediterranean countries for written matter, and Arabic, even to this day different in daily speech and printed matter).
He also goes over quite a bit of ground in this section about the use of "unnecessary do" in the modern English language, as in "do you think this is a good idea?" It took me a while to understand this concept, because we use (unnecessary) 'do' so much in our regular speech that we don't even think about it, but it seems no other Germanic languages use it this way.
The end section was of particular interest to me, because having studied in grade school in Israel, I learned how Hebrew was a semitic language which at one point evolved from Phoenician, and here McWhorter makes the argument that even the proto-Germanic language, from which modern languages such as English, German and Dutch evolved, through the sea travels of peoples such as the Phoenicians, probably had similar influences as well.
An overview more than anything, but fascinating in parts.
Another area, and much better recorded in other language histories is the influence of Old Norse prepositions on English, starting in the north of England where the Vikings first landed.
McWhorter spends a chapter trying to dispose of the Sapir-Whorf hypotheses, which states that a language and its grammaticali construction has a great influence on thought. Most professional linguists do not spend time on this, so he is obviously speaking to a more lay audience on this issue. What he doesn't tease out well is how many people who are bilingual will find one language has specific expressions that are a whole lot better than the approximation in the other language. So, it is easy for a person to jump to the conclusion that language really does influence thought. This book was written in 2008, and the work of the linguist Dan Everett had not taken firm hold. This is where a small Amazon language, Piraha, seems to flout many rules of how the rest of the world uses language.
I will say that I am glad that McWhorter does not use any of the Chomskyan generative grammar apparatus, as that would have been a distraction.
An other thing I enjoyed were the editorial comments that McWhorter added just for the audiobook version of the book. I don't think there were a lot, but they were interesting.
McWhorter spends a lot of his time defending his theories of how changes to English came to be. I really don't have a dog in any of those fights, so I wasn't sure how those with opposing views would contradict him, but I thought it was interesting that he brought the fight to the attention of the masses. Was he hoping to get acceptance of his ideas by getting the general public behind him?
All in all an interesting book. Recommended.
This is what this book is about. How the language most likely changed, but you can't depend on the writing because only a few people could write, and the writing was in a formal way, not spoken by the common people.
Its interesting. Mr. McWhorter definitely has the academic arrogance going on - where he can dis other Linguists in the field while at the same time praising him for due diligence.
Its a good book, it will leave you thinking about languages and how they can change over the years, even taking on aspects of a neighboring language if the situation is right. Its also a fairly easy read - you don't need to know how grammar works to be able to read this book.
English is an offshoot of North Germanic, and in some ways those connections are obvious. In other ways, English is a bit weird even by North Germanic standards--and one section is
But the main focus is English, and English has it's own weird traits. We often talk about all the vocabulary English has borrowed, or stolen, from other languages. McWhorter points out that all languages take useful vocabulary where they find it, and English is a bit unusual in having encountered so many different languages so early in its development.
What makes English different from other North Germanic languages and their descendants is grammar. One of the grammatical oddities of English is what linguists call "meaningless do." As in, "Do you know her?" "Do you want to go to the pool?" It's a word that is doing no grammatical work at all, and there is no equivalent in most Indo-European language, and specifically not in the Germanic languages most closely related to English. We use it many times a day, and never think it sounds odd, but it is odd. Where did it come from? Note: McWhorter is not a big fan of the theory that changes in a language "just happen" that purely by chance resemble structures in other, unrelated languages that happen to be nearby.
There's a similar construction in a couple of languages Old English had a lot of contact with, though, and McWhorter lays out the evidence in, I think, convincing detail.
The other notably weird thing about English compared to its relatives is the nearly-complete loss of the case endings all the other Germanic languages have. McWhorter also thinks the standard explanation for this is mistaken, and makes a very good case for his alternative explanation.
There's a lot more to this book, but these are some of the highlights. It's enjoyable, informative, and a really good listen.
Recommended.