Bryson covers the entire history of language, from the first crude utterings of Neanderthal man to the explosion of English as a global language in this century. We learn why "island," "freight," and "colonel" are spelled in such unphonetic ways, and why "four" has a "u" in it while "forty" does not. We also discover that Noah Webster occasionally plagiarized and that Samuel Johnson ("Dictionary Johnson"), though no plagiarist, was often careless and inaccurate.
"MOTHER TONGUE is a book that will, like the English language itself, amuse, delight and occasionally astonish you." (Publisher's Source)