From the Bookshelf of The Aspiring Polymath's Society

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English
by
Start date
March 1, 2013
Finish date
March 31, 2013
Discussion
Group Reads
Discussion leader
Ian Danskin
Why we're reading this
This book is about the rather muddled, mongrel origins of English, and attempts to explain why English is…more

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Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 16 topics — 118 comments total
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What Members Thought

Rebecca Radnor
Oct 14, 2019 rated it it was amazing
Shelves: history, british-uk
Did the audible version, read by the author. This guy reads his own work as well as Neil Gaiman does. The story is both utterly fascinating and impressively boring, as he goes over points of grammar and word usage to argue that the generally accepted ideas about how English evolved just don't hold water in the light of new evidence (some of it genetic) which forces us to look again and consider other options... such as welsh and celtic which tend to be neglected because none of the academics stu ...more
Juniper
Mar 31, 2011 marked it as to-read
Shelves: to-acquire
Traveller
Mar 02, 2012 marked it as to-read
David
Apr 19, 2012 marked it as to-read
Xiri
Jul 17, 2012 marked it as to-read
Rohit Saha
Feb 11, 2013 marked it as to-read
Nate
Feb 22, 2013 marked it as to-read
Erika
Feb 22, 2013 marked it as to-read
Fcomanueel
Apr 17, 2013 marked it as to-read
A
Apr 18, 2013 marked it as to-read
Dallas Schiegg
Sep 15, 2013 rated it it was amazing
Shelves: language
Jamie Jetson
Feb 22, 2014 rated it really liked it
Daniel Sperry
Apr 23, 2014 rated it it was amazing
Shelves: non-fiction
Joe
May 04, 2014 marked it as to-read
Jonathan Anderson
Jan 08, 2015 rated it really liked it
John Van der vuurst
Feb 02, 2015 marked it as to-read
Shelves: linguistics
Brendan
Jul 28, 2017 rated it it was amazing
Chathura Colombage
Jan 09, 2020 marked it as to-read
Nate
Sep 18, 2020 marked it as to-read
Kathy Jo
Sep 25, 2020 marked it as to-read
Hrishikesh
Jan 29, 2022 marked it as to-read
Shelves: linguistics