In the first part of the book Our Magnificent bastard tongue by John
McWhorter starts describing how we use the verb form –ing and the “meaningless do” in order ourselves clear when we talk
and these terms came to the English language by themselves. The book also talks
about how English is different from other languages, although some of them use
the “do and –ing” but not all of them use them in the same form as English.
McWhorter explains in four assumptions that language had change.
I
found very significant the part where McWhorter talks about the mix of
languages which gives them new words and grammar cheeks. According to him, many
of these mix languages still exist like the Patois language or “hybrid” which was
adapted by Jamaicans, is a mix of English and the language of origin they spoke
in times of slavery. The mix of these languages reminds me when we talked about
word formation (borrowing) which as we know is taking over words from other
languages, in this case is English.
Although the book has a lot of
information and it gives good examples of everything, it seems like I can’t
understand that much about it specially the par that talks about Celts (11). I only
understood all when talked about the “meaningless do and the –ing” I have a
clear view of what he is talking about there. I wonder how well I will
understand the second part of the book.
