Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling

by: David Wolman

Published by: Smithsonian Books/Collins

Reviewed by Connie Anderson

Recently I sat with several retired schoolteachers. Somehow we started talking about the history of words. We also decided that English is a most challenging language. Did you know that 1.4 billion people speak, read and write English today?

David Wolman, author of Righting the Mother Tongue , would have it right in with that conversation.

Why does English have silent letters in words like rhyme (rime), gnarly (narly), and rhubard (rubard)?

Why do we have rules like “i before e except after c”–and then “weird” breaks the rule.

Orthography is the composition of words. It’s the entire writing system of language. This concept of orthography indicates to me that writing is a well-done combination of words, grammar and punctuation. That’s why when I read and then review a book (not this one) that is filled with errors, I’m annoyed because this implies either the author or the publisher is suggesting we overlook the errors and just focus on the storyline. Yikes!

Wolman gives us history of the where and why of words. For example, England’s Alfred the Great felt it was important to have knowledge and have a way of teaching it by writing it down. Our English as we know it, is a mix of several cultures, languages, and often many words were added by the victor in a battle. You win–you get to add your words to the loser’s language. The French added 10,000 words to a loser’s language in year 1500.

New words come into our vocabulary every day, thanks to blogging, chat lines, etc., however that does not put them into our dictionary. What will become of our English language when we are governed by people that communicate by text messages, “shorthand” words and spelling-be-darned attention to detail? Looks like the challenger in this war of (inaccurate) words is winning, and if you value correctness like I do, we are the loser. I hate to think about it!

Armchair Interviews says: This was a most fascinating read for anyone who cares about language and its history–and how it affects us today.