Didn't finish. I liked the writing style and the occasional nuggets of fun language info. But the list of pronunciation symbols and the discussion of phonemes and their physical production left me pretty sleepy.

P.G. Wodehouse usually starts his Uncle Fred stories off with a stooge character (an Egg, a Bean, or a Crumpet) saying "I don't know if you happen to know what the word 'excesses' means, but these are what Pongo's Uncle Fred, when in London, invariably commits." This is essentially the frame of mind in which one approaches any book by Anthony Burgess: Sometimes he goes too far in the opening sentence, sometimes it's buried more deeply in the text, but you know that sooner or later you will be exposed to linguistic excesses of one sort or another.

Here we have a whole book devoted to the subject of language, so there should be plenty of scope for fireworks, but Burgess is unusually hesitant in lighting the blue touch-paper. He seems rather too preoccupied with getting into the persona of the pompous, arrogant Oxbridge professor of linguistics he wants us to imagine as narrator of the book: evidently, even at this late stage in his life, he still had a chip on his shoulder about being a colonial schoolmaster with a Manchester BA. Only occasionally do we get the authentic voice of Burgess-the-novelist penetrating through the dry undergrowth of phonetic symbols and vowel-shifts. When he gets going — as he does, for instance, in the wonderful brief history of literary English he packs into twenty pages near the end of the book, or in his little rhapsodies on our favourite English swearwords — he's brilliant, performing death-defying acrobatics with language without batting an eyelid. But when he's dull, he's very, very dull.

If you want a quick introduction to linguistics, or to English in particular, this probably isn't the best book to go for: someone like Simeon Potter or David Burchfield will take you through the same material in half the time with far less fuss, and be easier to refer back to. Burgess doesn't even include a basic bibliography. On the other hand, if you enjoy Burgess's kind of opinionated idiosyncrasy and are prepared to skip a few pages of the Great Vowel Shift here and there, this can be an entertaining book to dip into. ( )

This book started off strong, with an in-depth look at language in general and several foreign languages in particular. For example, Burgess devotes an entire chapter to "the sentence" and compares syntactical patterns from various languages. The Romance languages, Russian, German and Malay each receive their own substantial chapters, as does Japanese, although that chapter is almost disappointingly short in comparison to those devoted to other languages.

The best chapter in this first part was called "Should we learn foreign languages?", which extolled the virtue of learning a foreign language and included great tips for how to start the learning process. As a language aficionado, I approved wholeheartedly of this chapter's argument.

The second half of the book dealt with the history of English, which is a broad subject in itself. It was also somewhat boring. The sections dealing with Anglo-Saxon times and Beowulf English were dry reading for me, and I admit to having skimmed those parts more than I probably should have. A chapter on Scottish English, meanwhile, was ruined for me because my book, which came from the public library, had highlighted parts labelled "Wrong". I am appalled when I find writing in library books -- I consider them to be public property, so writing in them is akin to scrawling graffiti on a park bench. Someone else had also been writing pedantic corrections to the section on Latin (or maybe it was the same person), and that too was annoying. Look, if you own the book, mark it up as you please, but don't mark up a book that isn't yours.

In any case, other people's vandalism has nothing to do with the book's content, so I shall continue with my review. Yes, the section on the history of English was less interesting than the part on language in general and foreign languages in particular. I actually stopped reading in the middle of the last chapter, which was on how to teach English in schools, because it was rather dull.

Despite the dull sections, the book was overall an interesting read. Burgess is liberal with his examples, especially in the first part, although his chapter on The Great Vowel Shift is quite instructive as well as he shows, using IPA, how Shakespeare himself may have sounded reading his sonnets aloud. So the first part, plus little gems like these, make this book worth a read for all language lovers. ( )

A wide-ranging book about language and linguistics for the non-specialist reader. It covers many topics, including the physical production of speech, an overview of the development of linguistic theory, and a great deal on the English language. Despite the sometimes technical subject matter, the book is so engagingly written that it is a real pleasure to read. ( )

I originally bought this book for a Linguistics class at university - but it was optional, and I didn't read a page of it. Years later, I picked it back up and I loved it. It doesn't read like a textbook. Anthony Burgess's love of the language is so apparent that a potentially dry subject is instead incredibly captivating. The book is packed full of examples, easy-to-understand analogies, and amazing facts that will make you say "Ooh" out loud. ( )