Mother Tongue: Flavours of a Second Generation

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This is a good, concise, erudite, readable over-view of the history, present and future of the English language. A stunningly evocative cookbook with creative modern recipes that pay homage to the rich and diverse Punjabi and South Asian culinary traditions. Also, Irish and Welsh orthography is far more internally consistent than is that of English—but Bryson only allows the features of English to be virtues. Indeed, Tan conjectures that many Asian American children are probably encouraged to pursue careers in jobs requiring maths and science rather than English for this reason. It's not at all difficult if you bother to learn the rules, which are far simpler than those of English.

Gurdeep Loyal, Mother Tongue: ‘You can preserve your heritage

Aluminium at least follows the pattern set by other chemical elements— potassium, radium, and the like. Some of this was really illuminating, but the parts discussing the minute details of spelling and grammatical shifts were slow-going unless you are truly a student of the language and I found somewhat less interesting.

When the first inhabitants of the continent arrived in Botany Bay in 1788 they found a world teeming with flora, fauna, and geographical features such as they had never seen. This account popularises the subject and makes it accessible to the lay reader, but it has been criticised for some inaccuracies, such as the perpetuation of several urban myths. Whether it’s a birthday, someone passing an exam, or someone moving into a new house – dare I say it, even when sad things happen, we will have samosas because everyone knows they’re the thing that will lift people up.

Mother Tongue: Flavours of a Second Generation - Kindle Mother Tongue: Flavours of a Second Generation - Kindle

Dense with information and anecdotes, Mother Tongue touches on the hilarious and the devastating, with ample dashes of an ingredient so painfully. But because she is rebellious and likes to challenge people’s assumptions about her, Tan bucked this trend. To Bryson, Welsh is "as unpronounceable as it looks", and Welsh pronunciations "rarely bear much relation to their spellings. p36) In some languages, like Spanish, spelling and pronounciation are almost the same, in other languages, like Danish and apparantly Welsh, they are not.

In fact, it would appear that one of the beauties of the English language is that even with the most tenuous grasp you can speak volumes if you show enough enthusiasm — a willingness to tootle with vigor, as it were. What a hilarious, fascinating, and educational look at our wacky, wonderful, and WAY complicated language. It was really exciting growing up in Leicester because I got to experience all these sorts of different cultures, but equally, as with any kids, we loved pizza, pasta, burgers and American junk food – and our parents were really happy to indulge us, because they loved it just as much as we did.