Editions

Mother Tongue

  • Imprint: Penguin

  • Published: 01/10/2009

  • ISBN: 9780141040080

  • Length: 288  Pages

  • Dimensions: 199mm x 19mm x 133mm

  • Weight: 204g

  • RRP: £9.99

Mother Tongue

Bill Bryson

'More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to...'

Only Bill Bryson could make a book about the English language so entertaining. With his boundless enthusiasm and restless eye for the absurd, this is his astonishing tour of English. From its mongrel origins to its status as the world's most-spoken tongue; its apparent simplicity to its deceptive complexity; its vibrant swearing to its uncertain spelling and pronunciation, Bryson covers all this as well as the many curious eccentricities that make it as maddening to learn as it is flexible to use.

Bill Bryson's classic Mother Tongue is a highly readable and hilarious tale of how English came to be the world's language.

  • Imprint: Penguin

  • Published: 01/10/2009

  • ISBN: 9780141040080

  • Length: 288  Pages

  • Dimensions: 199mm x 19mm x 133mm

  • Weight: 204g

  • RRP: £9.99

More from this author

About the Author

Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. Settled in England for many years, he moved to America with his wife and four children for a few years, but has since returned to live in the UK. His bestselling travel books include The Road to Little Dribbling, The Lost Continent, Notes From a Small Island, A Walk in the Woods and Down Under. In a national poll, Notes from a Small Island was voted the book that best represents Britain. His acclaimed work of popular science, A Short History of Nearly Everything, won the Aventis Prize and the Descartes Prize, and was the biggest selling non-fiction book of its decade in the UK. His new book The Body: A Guide for Occupants is an extraordinary exploration of the human body which will have you marvelling at the form you occupy.

Bill Bryson

Related articles

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Podcasts

Bill Bryson on The Penguin Podcast

20 October 2015
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Features

Bill Bryson’s source notes for At Home and One Summer

21 June 2016
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Extracts

The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson

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