i finished bill bryson's mother tongue awhile back, but haven't had the chance to post about it until now. the book basically gives you the run down on how english developed over the years. it's a very interesting read. i learned alot from the book. for example most of the rules we use for english come from latin, which is why a great deal of them don't work or make much sense(latin and english being different languages after all). shakespeare coined something like 20,000 new words - 10,000 of which we still use today. and apparently the word ketchup comes from chinese. i'm a bit puzzled by that one as ketchup sounds nothing like the mandarin word for ketchup - maybe it comes from cantonese or some other dialect. this book made me want to be a linguist, or at least learn more about different languages.

next up on my reading list is bill bryson's made in america(an informal history of english in the united states) which should come in handy when my students ask me where the meaning of certain words come from.