blueoranges's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
angelofthe0dd's review
4.0
I'm forever fascinated by the history of the English language. Bill Bryson presents a history of English from the perspective of other languages - in the sense that he juxtaposes parts of English that exist in other languages as well as the roots of English itself. In other words, it's not just a vanilla history book.
lit_chick's review against another edition
2.0
I'm usually a huge fan of Bill Bryson's writing, but wasn't interested in his book on the history of the English language since I studied it in college. What I did like about this adaptation was it was a 6 part series he did for the BBC and he interviewed all types of interesting scholars and there was lots of sound bites of people speaking different types of English. The sound quality was terrible though, and it got a little dry towards the end. I wonder if the book was better.
a_manning11's review against another edition
5.0
This was delightfully accurate and funny, and I've already used some of the information provided having an entire conversation with my four-year-old son made up of play on words and homonyms. It was hilarious.
rlse's review against another edition
4.0
Seems cheating to call it a book as it is really more like a podcast miniseries, but it was fun. A good complement to The Mother Tounge, which I read a long time ago, and also to The History of English podcast that I'm currently enjoying. Great audio examples of the dialect and historical differences I English around the world.
mcc's review against another edition
informative
3.0
Listened to this audiobook whilst traipsing about London for a week-end which felt highly appropriate. I find etymology and the evolution of languages very interesting and this was a nice series of interviews on the subject.