Mother Tongue: The Story of the English Language の感想

178 人が閲覧しました

It’s great that ebooks allow me to reread stuff from my younger days. This book was one of the driving forces behind my love of language and linguistic. It’s a bit dated now, but content wise you could hardly ask for more.

I just can’t finish!

Page after misinforming page is polluting my mind with fantasy after disjointed fantasy about not only English, but also all the other languages in the world that have the misfortune to appear in unfair caricature in this book. As many others have already highlighted some of the worst errors, I will limit myself to just one: As an English teacher in Japan, I made it a priority to learn the local language and I can tell you that the Japanese word for “foreigner” (that would include me) does not mean “stinking of foreign hair”. Just as the English word, derived from old French means “outside person” so too does “gaijin” which comprises of the Chinese character for “outside” and “person”.

The lack of research is astonishing. How long would it have taken to at least pick up a dictionary from the language section of a local library and check a few things before publishing them in a book about language? A simple pocket dictionary would have done