The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way

Occurring at some point in the 16th century, the Great Vowel Shift was a series of changes to the English language: “in a relatively short period the long vowel sounds of English changed their values in a fundamental and seemingly systematic way, each of them moving forward and upward in the mouth” (97).

Indo-European is the language family native to most of Europe and portions of Asia. In Chapter 2, Bryson refers to Indo-European as the parent language to many classical languages such as Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, Celtic, and Persian (23).

Onomatopoeia comprises words based on actual, natural sounds. In Chapter 2, Bryson explains that there is a “slight tendency to have words cluster around certain sounds” (17). For example, English includes a number of words associated with wetness that begin with “sp” (like “spill”).