book rec

[auntiemeesh]

I've been reading actual books, in paper format, the past few days. Right now I'm reading Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English, by John McWhorter. In the introduction, he talks about how, even though English is a germanic language, it has developed in weird ways that no other germanic language has. He completely hooked me with this analogy.

"English's Germanic relatives are like assorted varieties of deer -- antelopes, springboks, kudu, and so on -- antlered, fleet-footed, big-brown-eyed variations on a theme. English is some dolphin swooping around underwater, all but hairless, echolocating and holding its breath. Dolphins are mammals like deer: they give birth to live young and are warm-blooded. But clearly the dolphin has strayed from the basic mammalian game plan to an extent that no deer has."

Turn the page and come to this: "German, Dutch, Swedish, and the gang are, by and large, variations on what happened to Proto-Germanic as it morphed along over three thousand years. They are ordinary rolls of the dice. English, however, is kinky. It has a predilection for dressing up like Welsh on lonely nights."

I had a hard time putting the book down at a (slightly just past) decent hour last night. It promises to be entertaining as well as informative.

As an interesting side note, if you put quotation marks in your post, apparently livejournal automatically tags your post with 'quotes.' Who knew.

Comments

[lyda-pearl.livejournal.com]

sounds engaging. I started in on Brush Cat about logging in the great north woods and then thought I'd just take a glance at Endurance before turning out the lights and more or less read the whole thing!

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

I love getting caught up in a book that way, but sometimes I regret it the next morning when the alarm goes off, lol.

[ani-no-mouse.livejournal.com]

LJ is a mysterious beast in its own right!

I hope you continue to enjoy the book. It sounds like a lot of fun!

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

It's definitely an interesting book. And lj is indeed a mysterious beast!

[ansostuff.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a great book.

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

It talks a lot about the Celtic influence on English, which is something I never knew. So it's pretty cool from that perspective, as well.

[(Anonymous)]

Sounds like an interesting book. I will make note of it. Have you ever read any Bill Bryson. He has some where he comments on the English language but I can't think of the titles right now. I haven't actually read any of those but have enjoyed some of his others.

Re: quotes. I put a quote into a post not too long ago and don't remember or didn't notice if it marked it automatically. However I may not have used quotes or it may because I am cheap and you have a paid account.

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

I don't remember if I've actually read any of Bill Bryson's books, but I've listened to at least one on cassette. He's a good author, though, so I'd probably like any of them.