"The Mother Tongue"

I just finished reading "The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way" by Bill Bryson (thanks Molly!). He writes knowledgeably and hilariously about the history of the language from the Indo-European roots to Cockney rhyming slang and everything in between. As a teacher in Japan, I was particularly interested in the passages that explain why English is so tough to pick up as a second language. He writes of how "no other language in the world has more words spelled the same way and yet pronounced so differently," giving the following list of paired words as an example. Phonics can only take a student so far.

heard--beard
road--broad
five--give
fillet--skillet
early--dearly
beau--beauty
steak--streak
ache--mustache
low--how
doll--droll
scour--four
four--tour
grieve--sieve
paid--said
break--speak

Here's another list that illustrates the difficulty of English spelling. "See if you can tell which of the following words are mispelled."

supercede
conceed
procede
idiosyncracy
concensus
accomodate
impressario
irresistable
rhythym
opthalmologist
diptheria
anamoly
afficianado
caesarian
grafitti

Click the comments link below to check your answer.

And here's a list of British and American synonyms. Cover the column of the country you are most familiar with and see how many words you know. (The list was designed for Americans so British will probably have an easier time of it. And sorry if the table looks weird; I can't get it to look quite right.)

British	American
Cot	Baby’s crib
Cotton (for sewing)	Thread (for sewing)
Courgette	Zucchini
To skive	To loaf
Candy floss	Cotton candy
Full stop (punctuation)	Period (punctuation)
Inverted commas	Quotation marks
Berk	Idiot, boor
Joiner	Skilled carpenter
Knackered	Worn out
Number plate	License plate
Old Bill	Policeman
Scarper	Run away
To chivvy	To hurry along
Subway	Pedestrian underpass
Pantechnicon	Furniture removal truck
Flyover	Vehicle overpass
Leading article	Newspaper editorial
Fruit machine	One-armed bandit
Smalls	Ladies’ underwear
Coach	Long-distance bus
Spiv	Petty thief
To grizzle	To whine
To hump	To carry a heavy load

Despite having a degree in English literature and having worked with British colleagues for several years, I only knew eight of the British words.

Just to show how Bryson combines scholarship and humor, here is what he writes near the end of a section about how the 60-million-word Oxford English dictionary came into being:

But perhaps the most notable of all the OED's minor quirks is its inistence that Shakespeare should be spelled Shakspere. After explaining at some length why this is the only correct spelling, it grudgingly acknowledges that the commonest spelling "is perh. Shakespeare." (To which we might add, it cert. is.)

If you're interested in this book, check it out on amazon with this link. And don't forget to check the comments below to see how many of those words were spelled incorrectly.