Reddit mentions of The Mother Tongue - English And How It Got That Way

"Instability" and "unstable" have the same root, the Latin adjective "stabilis" (from the verb "stare," to stay). Like /u/probably-yeah said, the prefixes "in" and "un" came to English from different sources: "in" is French/Latin and "un" is Germanic.

English spelling really didn't standardize until the advent of the printing press, and then the choices were made by book publishers and were often arbitrary. 'Correct' English spelling was developed piecemeal, and various attempts to streamline it over the centuries have failed. Source: Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way.

You've had a setback, but it isn't the end of the world. Things probably aren't as bad as you think they are, but it will take work both to catch up, and to convince yourself that you're up to speed.

1. Decide you're going to work at this. It sounds like this is where the major gap has been -- without your parents providing goals, it can be difficult to motivate yourself. Make a schedule, and stick to it. Assume something like four hours of work a day and do it -- you might find allocating certain hours works better. I don't know if you have other responsibilities, like a job or caring for family, so ultimately you'll have to decide on this.
   
   
2. Figure out how far behind you really are.
   
   a) Reading
   
   A lot of English skills are about practice, so reading anything (including Reddit) is good. Maybe pick up a popular book:
   
   "The Hunger Games" or "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's (or Sorcerer's) Stone" are both at about a grade 6 level. I'd avoid Twilight, which is at about a grade 4 level (and everything past the first book is crap, in my opinion).
   
   If that's okay, try "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "1984". These are more cultural classics (so you can feel more sophisticated), but at still interesting to read, and are at about a grade 8-9 level.
   
   There aren't really a lot of books that are more difficult than that to read, so if you can manage that, you can read well enough to do a GED.
   
   The more difficult books generally use archaic language like "The Canterbury Tales" or Shakespeare. In general I wouldn't recommend Shakespeare since reading plays is difficult, the language complicates things, too many people treat them as serious and deadly dull, and it takes a lot of work to even understand many of the references -- that's a place for a good teacher (and teachers who are up to the task are few and far between).
   
   You might also try looking at something like (Dont-Know-Much-About-History)[http://www.amazon.com/Don't Know Much About History/dp/0060083824]. It's fairly advanced reading (grade 11-12), and it teaches some aspects of US history that you might not know. If you like that, there's a similar book by the same author about geography. I'll also suggest (Mother Tongue)[http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-English-How-That/dp/0380715430] by Bill Bryson. Again a possibly interesting subject, and it's funny.
   
   For other books, a good librarian can be a great resource, or some sites can offer some suggestions for books based on reading level.
   
   b) Writing
   
   I think that clear written communication is a very important skill. Your question was clear, so that's a good sign you aren't too far behind. Some Essay writing is more common in higher education, but the skills are still useful in office work. The introduction in an essay and an executive summary are quite similar.
   
   The problem here is that getting someone else's point of view is very helpful. You might be able to find some assistance on Reddit, but many colleges have writing centers to help students with this. You could probably approach a local high-school teacher -- in many cases they are willing to help any motivated student. It's amazing how much you can improve if you find someone who is decent and take the time to re-write the essay a few times to incorporate their suggestions. It's difficult to completely rewrite an essay multiple times, but going through the effort once or twice can make a dramatic difference. (As a student my wife worked in one of those writing centers and several times had cases where the professors didn't believe the students could improve that much that quickly.)
   
   c) Math
   
   There are a number of sites like http://ca.ixl.com/ that have basic math tests. These don't try to teach math like Khan Academy does, but they can help figure out where to start going through the lessons.
   
   I'm already helping with some math tutoring, so I'm fairly comfortable offering my help here. (If you're serious about this, PM me ahead of time since I'm not always logged into Reddit.)
   
   
3. Catching up
   
   Depending on how far behind you actually are you have a few options.
   
   As others have said, there are GED courses at many community colleges.
   
   If you don't feel ready for that there are also free online high school classes. I don't know much about these, but this one seems to have a pretty standard curriculum, and gets reasonable approval from the home schooling forums. There are also summer school and adult education high school courses that you can take in most places. Or you might try enrolling in regular high school -- this might be the best option, since it provides a structure, extra help from teachers if you're willing to ask for it, and some of the social contact. If you sign up for next year now you'll have given yourself a deadline for some of the other work, which might help with the motivation.

I always get very excited when anyone acknowledges my username, so thanks! And yes, I love it very much; I'd recommend The Mother Tongue - English and How It Got That Way if you want a hilarious (seriously, it is) book on English that'll make you love it too.

If you are interested in this sort of thing, I recommend going to your local ibrary and finding The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson. He's funny and has an engaging style (plus it isn't very long). He's one of my favorite nonfiction authors.

Bryson also wrote a companion book called Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States. I haven't read that one yet, but just based on the author, it's probably something worth checking out.

And this:
http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-Bill-Bryson/dp/0380715430/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291598396&sr=8-1

Bill Bryson fo life, muthafuckas!

Tough to decide between the two, but it's the same author and they're tied together so I'll just go with it: Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States and The Mother Tongue - English And How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson. As a lover of language and its history, it's really interesting to see the links between usage in Britain and America.

I didn't know of Bryson before randomly buying these (damn, do I love book stores) and plan on buying more of his in the future when my reading list has been pared down a bit. (I've since learned he's very well-known and my outdoors-loving, recovering alcoholic dad read a Bryson book about getting sober and hiking the Appalachians a few years back.) His writing is very engaging and incredibly funny. I've read a lot of other linguistic books that weren't nearly as "fun" to read as these. Highly recommended.

This is a very interesting point. Last week I read The Mother Tongue by Bryson. It's a wonderful overview of the development and divergence of the English language, and explores the tendencies for Americans to retain the foreign word for an object: but also the trend of using the German or French word for a foreign article over a spanish/mandarin/japanese one.

He argued that it came down to isolation of a language affecting it's development the most. There are people in England who are not mutually intelligible to one another, just as there are people who cannot understand one another in America, but they are all technically speaking the same language. The idiomatic expressions are more unique than regional dress or music (with the exception of the appalachians). Yet, if you add things like Uber or Wonder or Kinder to the front of a word, it becomes mutually intelligible across most dialects because of common Germanic roots. The same could be said for the latin participles, also.
I assume with foods that are easy to pronounce and are phonetically identifiable (for example saur sounds like 'sour' and kraut has a hard sound like 'cabbage'... retaining saurkraut is not as difficult as say: poutine, which is often called monster fries or urban fries).

He might really like this book by Bill Bryson: The Mother Tongue.

Trivia: it was aks and asteriks until fairly recently.

Here's one mention. I first read about this in Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue.

Recommended these a while back, great, assessable reads.

The Language Instinct by Stephen Pinker
http://www.amazon.com/The-Language-Instinct-Mind-Creates/dp/0061336467/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343383543&sr=8-1&keywords=the+language+instinct

Patterns in the Mind by Ray Jackendoff
http://www.amazon.com/Patterns-Mind-Language-Human-Nature/dp/0465054625/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343383561&sr=1-1&keywords=patterns+in+the+mind

And if you are into etymology, check out

The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, by Bill Bryson
http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-English-How-That/dp/0380715430/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343383614&sr=1-1&keywords=the+mother+tongue

The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour Through Mankind's Greatest Invention, by Guy Deutscher
http://www.amazon.com/The-Unfolding-Language-Evolutionary-Invention/dp/0805080120/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343383676&sr=1-2-fkmr0&keywords=guy+deucher+language

Again, all superb books.

If you find the history of the English language interesting, I highly recommend the book The Mother Tongue, by Bill Bryson: http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-Bill-Bryson/dp/0380715430

I also liked http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-Bill-Bryson/dp/0380715430/

If you like this kind of stuff, here's an entire book devoted to the subject https://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-English-How-That/dp/0380715430

This book has a chapter on curse words and where each of them came from. It's very interesting.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Mother-Tongue-English-That/dp/0380715430

Of course I'm biased because this is what I love to do for a living (teach about language), but I also find myself learning about language in my free time.

Here are my "Greatest Hits" of language people, programs, blogs, and readings, in no particular order (despite the fact that I've numbered them):

1. Geoff Nunberg's segment on NPR's Fresh Air. Link to the Geoff Nunberg archive on NPR
   
   
2. The "On Language" column in The New York Times Magazine. I like the current columnist, Ben Zimmer, but I'm partial to William Safire. Here's a link to Safire's "How to Read a Column"
   
   
3. There are a number of good language blogs. It's probably "cheating" to put them all in one item, but here goes:
   
   

• Johnson, the language blog at The Economist
  
  
• Language Log
  
  
• Languagehat
  
  

4. Books:
   
   

• Bill Bryson: The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way and Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States
  
  
• Expletive Deleted by Ruth Wajnryb
  
  

5. Random stuff: I like George Carlin's many humorous takes on language and Margaret Atwood's fiction and Dr. Seuss's many made-up and lovely sounding words.
   
   And I subscribe to /r/logophilia, which often has many amusing words, like pulchritudinous, an ugly word that means something beautiful.
   
   EDIT: And it's great to get a book on usage. I like Garner's Modern American Usage, but here's a list from Diana Hacker at Bedford of other good usage guides

here's a great book on it

Napkin and orange are examples of article confusion. The original words were apkin and norange (think of Spanish naranja). When pronounced, an apkin and a norange became a napkin and an orange. At least that's what Bill Bryson related in Mother Tongue, one of my favorite books.

Relevant

http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-English-How-That/dp/0380715430/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347032489&sr=1-1&keywords=mother+tounge

From this book:
Plane crash = "involuntary conversion"
Patient died = "negative patient-care outcome"
And not sure if this count as an euphemism but
toothpicks = "interdental stimulators"
As the book says, 'Why call a spade a spade if you can call it a manual earth-restructuring implement?'

Language plays a vital role in the forming and destruction of empires.

lets see...

• Bill Byrson's The Mother Tongue
  
• Korea, old and new: A history
  
• Sandman Slim
  
• Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
  
• How to Win Friends & Influence People
  
• The Design of Everyday Things
  
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces
  
  I've been interested in the development of the english language, and I like Bryson's writing style. I met someone from Korea, and as per my usual habit, when I meet someone out of country I try to learn some of their native history, thus the history book. I like urban fantasy, so Sandman slim looked interesting. I'm a CompE major, so code and The design of everyday things is relevant to me. The others are just things that have been recommended to me.
  
  I think I might get get through half of them at most, especially since I also have a Steam library calling me like the whore it is. This is the first year I have access to a large university library during break, so I'm going to take advantage of it.l

I highly recommend "Mother Tongue" by Bill Bryson. Hilarious and great history and understanding of the English language;

https://www.amazon.ca/Mother-Tongue-English-How-that/dp/0380715430

This is simply one of the funniest books I have ever read. And it answers this question, and many others.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mother-Tongue-English-That/dp/0380715430

I'm really not trying to rage against anything or break anything down. You just remind me of the French Academy, that stalwart defender of the French language which bans any "Anglicized" words from signs, and insists on people using the unwieldy "'courrier électronique" instead of "email." They're guided by the same principle you are: that there's some sort of "pure" form of the language.

I suggest reading Bill Bryson's excellent book The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way". In it, Bryson explains that most of the sacred English "rules"- for example, not ending sentences with a preposition- were simply made up and decided upon by stodgy old men. These men weren't translating rules from the heavens- they were just being persnickety and officious.

Language adapts. It incorporates new ideas, it gets rid of old ones, it naturally discards of things which are no longer useful to its speakers.

Insisting on a "proper" way to speak is lingual facism, if you'll excuse my hyperbole.

While you're waiting for the timer, you might try reading books on liguistics.

I'm being snarky, but I'm also being serious. You clearly are interested in linguistics, but you don't seem to know that much about how and why words form and evolve their meaning. A great book that I love because it's not a technical book for professional linguists, but for people like us who have a general interest in language and its history, is The Mother Tongue: - English And How It Got That Way, by Bill Bryson. Where a grammar teacher might say "'it's history' is wrong, the correct way to say it is 'its history'", a linguist might say, "'its' is considered correct, but someday that could change". That's a super general example, but from the reading I've done, I've noticed that linguists not only accept, but often prefer, when language breaks the rules, rather than abides by it.

And I suggest this book: Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue

Bill Bryson to the rescue!

http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-Bill-Bryson/dp/0380715430

Well, to linguists (and others), it does matter - to them! To the rest of us, what matters is that we all agree to use the same order - it keeps things, well, orderly. Because we've all implicitly agreed to use this order, it would gain nothing by trying to break it and use something else - if any order is just as good as any other, the current order is perfectly fine, and more importantly, compatible with current usage.


As to "why it matters that there is an order" I think can be answered not about language, but about human perception: we want to find order in chaos, and see patterns in everything, even when there is none - which is why gamblers have a huge problem, we see things like the face on mars, read tea leaves, etc. So we feel that there should be a reason why the letters are ABC, when there really isn't one outside of historical usage that changed over time.




For a good book related to the subject of English in general, pick up a copy of The Mother Tongue - English And How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson. Well written, very accessible to non-linguists.

You should read Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson.

Well there's this textbook but it's absurdly priced.

Bill Bryson has a book on the language. I haven't read it but Bryson is an excellent (very humorous) author.

Besides that, here is a free online summary. My claim about French is reiterated here.
>More than a third of all English words are derived directly or indirectly from French, and it's estimated that English speakers who have never studied French already know 15,000 French words.

Get another shot ready.

No, I really should try to follow my username.

I'm a language descriptivist, not a language prescriptivist. Essentially, the distinction is that for descriptivists, the definition of words is how they are used, whereas for prescriptivists, the definition of a word is prescribed, usually by a particular authority, such as a dictionary.

In the descriptivist paradigm, it is impossible to use a word incorrectly (but it can be used contrary to what is usual or expected), new words come into and out of existence all the time, and a person can define a word for their own contextual use as they please.

In the prescriptivist paradigm, a word is incorrect if its use doesn't match the prescribing authority, new words must be specifically added by the authority, and a person is supposed to find the exact word or composition of words they need from the provided supply.

I find some problems with prescriptivism. First off, it means that some people who own the language others use. Second, there are many prescribing authorities, and they don't all agree. Third, if you want a word to describe a new concept, you're screwed.

I like descriptivism. First off, it's a better, more accurate model for how people actually use language; people make up new words all the time; languages evolve, borrowing and adapting where they see fit. Second, allowing people to define words within a context allows for more expressiveness, compactness, and power in the language we use.

An example of a prescriptive language in French[1]. An prescriptive authority would be one like Webster's dictionary[2].

A descriptive language would be one like English. A descriptive authority would be one like the Oxford English Dictionary.

[1] French has the infamous Académie française, which determines exactly what the language consists of. The academy has been involved in suppression of native languages such as Breton and Basque as recently as 2008, and of native languages in the french colonies when France had colonies. Prescriptivists can commit crimes against humanity.

[2] Noah Webster was a very important person in the history of english, for many of the wrong reasons. He was staunchly involved in trying to reform english, and was more or less singlehandedly responsible for a number of changes in our speak. The dictionary itself has strayed towards descriptivism since its book on english usage in 1993.

The topic is actually a really big one, and well discussed. An excellent book on the history of english that touches on the subject is The Mother Tongue, by Bill Bryson.

Read The Mother Tongue, by Bill Bryson if this subject interests you. It's a layman's book going through some of the quirks of the English language.

From my own limited experience on the subject of linguistics and languages English is one of the most flexible languages for adopting and adapting vocabulary. We've got any number of loan words that originate in French/Spanish/Italian (the "Romance" group and the Latin they all stem from) as well as German (grammar and vocab) and even Japanese.

Check out Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue. It's a fantastic read that explains where the English language came from and why it's so messed up.

I generally don't like it when people are grammar Nazis, but maybe English isn't your first language so... You are using "there", which means a location. What you mean to say is "their", which implies ownership. It's one of the dumbest, most confusing things in English... but then again, it's a language full of dumb and confusing things.

Although, Bill Bryson makes a good case for English's seemingly random nature as being the reason it so influential.