Name: Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue
ISBN: 9781592404940

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue

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, Our Magnificent Bastard Language distills hundreds of years of fascinating lore into one lively history. In this trim volume of linguistic history, respected scholar John McWhorter focuses on underappreciated influences on the peculiar development of the English language: For instance, many of the English's strange grammar ticks can be traced to Celtic and Welch origins, which makes sense given the languages' longtime geographic proximity. Another important factor involves the Vikings. When the Scandinavian sailors came over to the Isles, they took up English as a second language, pruning it of many of its convolutions -- it was, after all, a functional tongue for them. This resulted in English evolving as a grammatically far simpler language than other Germanic languages. In the process of this fascinating historical excavation, McWhorter debunks many contemporary grammatical conventions, doing all this in a style that makes for an informative but unusually enjoyable read. - Publisher.

What Hacker News says

mannykannotDec 2024

Indeed - so we have two examples of behavior modification possibly attributable to the person's awareness of being in a different culture than before. If that is the case (which, we should note, is not established by these anecdotes) then it seems plausible that a switch in language could also trigger the same response, if the languages are associated, at least in that person's mind, with different cultural norms.

We can also wonder if something subtle was changed in translation, and I think it would be interesting if we could follow up by showing each of the experiment's subjects the two sets of questions side-by-side, and ask them whether they feel each pair is asking exactly the same question.

I have been reading John McWhorter's 'Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue' (strongly recommended), and only yesterday I read this passage:

"In German, one example [of the little complexities that creep into all languages] is a passel of little words that convey nuances of personal attitude. Using them is indispensable to sounding like an actual human being in the language - and mastering them is only possible via a year or more's exposure to the spoken language. Do you have your socks? is, in a vanilla sense, Hast du deine Socken? But you can also stick in the word auch - Hast du auch deine Socken? - in which case the sentence conveys "You have your socks, don't you?" In this usage, auch conveys a subtle, personal note of warning, impatience, correction..."

I am in no position to vouch for McWhorter's claim here, but his translation of the second version shows that this sort of nuance is present in idiomatic English.

I have just realized that this post is a sort of preemptive response to any suggestion that the outcome reported in the article is explicable only as an example of the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

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causiNov 2021

I highly recommend McWhorter's Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue.

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quickthrowmanMay 2021

Thanks for the heads up, I looked into criticism of this book and I won’t recommend it in the future.

If you happen to see this reply, would ‘Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English’ by McWhorter be a better choice for a pop-sci history of English? r/Linguistics seems to be fine with him.

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evincarofautumnApr 2012

Complexity comes from languages that arise in isolation. Basically, the fewer people speak a language, the less chance its natural complexity will degrade. Invasions and other interlinguistic contact create simplifications, most visibly pidgins and creoles. Check out Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by Ian McWhorter, which shows how English underwent this very process. What we speak today is a hilarious pidgin of Old English and Norman French, which are themselves mashups.

I wonder what will win: practically no new natural languages are being created, so simplification is running amok, but invasions are now rare, and we use computers almost exclusively in our own native tongues. Maybe we end up suffering global economic collapse and reverting to the natural language wars.

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davidwFeb 2009

I recently read his book, "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue", and while it was a little bit unbalanced (he spends far too long dwelling on certain points), I really enjoyed it.

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sorokodMay 2021

and books, e.g. "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue"

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