The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way

Indo-European is the language family native to most of Europe and portions of Asia. In Chapter 2, Bryson refers to Indo-European as the parent language to many classical languages such as Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, Celtic, and Persian (23).

Onomatopoeia comprises words based on actual, natural sounds. In Chapter 2, Bryson explains that there is a “slight tendency to have words cluster around certain sounds” (17). For example, English includes a number of words associated with wetness that begin with “sp” (like “spill”).

Orthoepy is the study of pronunciation. In Chapter 6, Bryson remarks that “nothing speaks more clearly for the absurdities of English pronunciation than that the word for the study of pronunciation in English, orthoepy, can itself be pronounced two ways” (89).

First published in 1884, the English Oxford Dictionary is the largest collection of English words to date and the principal historical dictionary of the English language. It was first published in unbound fascicles but was republished in 1928 in 10 bound volumes. A 20-volume second edition was published by the Oxford University Press in 1989; compiling work for a third edition began in 2000.

Romance Languages include French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian, all of which stemmed from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. Most of these were the languages of common people while Latin was the language of the upper class.