First Bryson book

I just read my first Bill Bryson book; he Mother Tongue: English and how it got that way. It was good; not the best book I've ever read on the subject. It would be a very good book on the history of English for non-linguists. I kept thinking to myself that some chapters and sections would be good for my future advanced ESL learners.
A few interesting tidbits from the book:
In the chapter "Good English and Bad" He is discussing language academies, "Such actions underline the one almost inevitable shortcoming of national academies. However progressive and far-seeing they may be to begin with, they almost always exert over time a depressive effect on change." He quotes Joseph Priestley in 1761, "We need make no doubt but that the best forms of speech will, in time, establish themselves by their own superior excellence: and in all controversies, it is better to wait the decisions of time, which are slow and sure, than to take those of synods, which are often hasty and injudicious."
He quotes Otto Jesperson, in regards to English's lack of authority ruling over it, "(English is like a garden) laid out seemingly without any definite plan, and in which you are allowed to walk everywhere according to your own fancy without having to fear a stern keeper enforcing rigorous regulations."
Bryson goes on to say that English "has long relied on self-appointed authorities."

A great quote about Pres Bush Sr., "The day after he was elected president in 1988, George Bush told a television reporter he couldn't believe the enormity of what had happened. Had president-elect Bush known that the primary meaning of enormity is wickidness or evilness, he would doubtless had selected a more apt term."

"One of the undoubted virtues of English is that it is a fluid and democratic language in which meanings shift and change in response to the pressures of common usage rather than the dictates of committees. It is a natural process that has been going on for centuries. To interfere with that process is arguably both arrogant and futile, since clearly the weight of usage will push new meanings into currency no matter how many authorities hurl themselves into the path of change."

He ends the chapter with this great tidbit:
"Perhaps for our last words on the subject of usage we should turn to the last words of the venerable French grammarian Dominique Bonhours, who proved on his deathbed that a grammarian's work is never done when he turned to those gathered loyally around him and whispered, 'I am about to - or I am going to - die; either expression is used.'"

The next chapter is titled, "Order out of chaos" and it is about dictionaries. "By virtue of their brevity, dictionary definitions often fail to convey the nuances of English. Rank and rancid mean roughly the same thing, but, as Aitchison notes, we would never talk about eating rank butter, or wearing rancid socks. A dictionary will tell you that tall and high mean much the same thing, but it won't explain to you that while you can apply either term to a building, you can apply only tall to a person."

The next chapter is "Old World, New World" Here he discusses the origin of OK. "Of all new words to issue from the New World, the quintessential Americanism without any doubt was O.K. Arguable America's single greatest gift to international discourse, OK is the most grammatically versatile of words, able to serve as an adjective (lunch was ok), verb (can you ok this for me?), noun (I need your ok on this), interjection (ok, I heard you),  and adverb (we did ok). It can carry shades of meaning that range from casual assent (shall we go? ok.) to great enthusiasm (OK!), to lukewarm endorsement (the party was ok) to a more or less meaningless filler of space (ok, can I have your attention?)."

He mentions US westward expansion an the words settlers came up with to describe their lives and words including hornswoggle, rambunctious, and kick the bucket. Some words made up by them didn't last: monstracious, teetoticiously, helliferocious, conbobberation, obflisticate, and others.

About the founding fathers adopting English as a national or official language: "The founding fathers were so little exercised by the question of an official language for the United States that they made no mention of it in the Constitution."

In another chapter, "English as a world language" he discusses borrowing back and forth between languages.
"What really rankles the French is not that they are borrowing so many words from the rest of the world but that the rest of the world is no longer borrowing so many from them. As the magazine Le Point put it: 'Our technical contribution stopped with the word chauffeur.'"

Using obfuscation (unclear language): an airline referred to a crash as an "involuntary conversion of a 727". Hospitals call patient deaths "negative patient-care outcomes." The pentagon described toothpicks as "wooden interdental stimulators" and tents as "frame-supported tension structures"

On computers' inability to "get" human language, "a computer was instructed to translate the expression out of sight, out of mind out of English and back in again and came up with blind insanity. It is curious to reflect that we have computers that effortlessly compute pi to 5000 places and yet cannot be made to understand that there is a difference between time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana or that in the English speaking world to make up a story, make up one's face and to make up after a fight are all quite separate things."

An ortheopist is a professional pronouncer (as in one hired by the BBC to help broadcasters with pronunciaton of strange and foreign names).

On a chapter called "Names"
The names of Britain's 70,000 or so pubs cover a broad range, running from the inspired to the probable, from the deft to the daft. Almost any name will do so long as it is at least faintly absurd, unconnected with the name of the owner, and entirely lacking in any suggestion of drinking, conversing or enjoying oneself. At a minimum the name should puzzle foreigners - this is a basic requirement of most British institutions -  and ideally it should excite long and inconclusive debate, defy all logical explanation, and evoke images that border on the surreal."

The English name Smith has equivalents (in meaning) in other languages: Schmidt (German), Ferrier (French), Ferraro (Italian), Herrero (Spanish), Kovacs (Hungarian), Kusnetzov (Russian).

In regards to place names in Britain: "Occasionally the spellings seem to defy pronunciation...but more often it is the other way around: The spellings look simple and straightforward, so that the innocent traveler is lulled into a sense of security, little realizing what treacheries they hide."

There is another chapter titled "swearing" which is predictably entertaining.
"Swearing seems to have some near-universal qualities. In almost all cultures, swearing involves one or more of the following: filth, the forbidden (incest), sacred, and usually all three. Most cultures have two levels of swearing - relatively mild and highly profane."
"English is unusual in including the impossible and the pleasurable in its litany of profanities. It is a strange and little noted idiosyncrasy of our tongue that when we wish to express extreme fury we entreat the object of our rage to undertake an anatomical impossibility, or stranger still, to engage in the one activity that is bound to give him more pleasure than almost anything else. Can there be, when you think about it, a more improbable sentiment than "Get fucked!" We might as well snarl, "Make a lot of money!" or "Have a nice day!"

"After Ok, fuck must be about the most versatile of all English words. It can be used to describe a multitude of conditions and phenomena, from making a mess of something (fuck up), to being casual or provocative (fuck around), to inviting or announcing a departure (fuck off), to being estimable (fucking-A), to being baffled (fuck if I know), to being disgusted (fuck this), and on and on."

"Fuck probably reached its zenith during WWII" snafu (situation normal - all fucked up), fubar (fucked up beyond all recognition), fubb (fucked up beyond belief).

"This tendency to transform profanities into harmless expressions is a particular characteristic of English swearing. Most languages employ euphemism in some measure...but no other language approaches English for the number of delicate expletives of the sort that you could safely say in front of a maiden aunt: darn, durn, drat, gosh, golly, goodness gracious, gee whiz, jeepers, shucks, and so on. We have scores, if not hundreds, of these terms."

There is a chapter called "wordplay" where he lists lots of cool anagram, palindromes, etc

anagrams:
carthorse - orchestra
contaminated - no admittance
emigrants - streaming
old testament - most talented
world cup team - talcum powder
ronald wilson reagan - insane anglo warlord
spiro agnew - grow a penis
two plus eleven - one plus twelve
western union - no wire unsent
circumstantial evidence - can ruin a selected victim
a stitch in time saves nine - this is meant as incentive
william shakespeare - i am a weakish speller (or) i like mr w h as a pal see (or) we all make his praise
the morse code - here come dots
victoria englands queen - rules a nice quiet land
parishioners - i hate parsons
intoxicate - excitation
schoolmaster - the classroom
mother in law - woman hitler

palindromes:
a man a plan a canal panama
norma is a selfless as i am ron
was it eliots toilet i saw
too far edna we wander afoot
madam im adam
sex at noon taxes
are we not drawn onward we few drawn onward to new era
able was i ere i saw elba
sums are not set a test on erasmus
satan oscillate my metallic sonatas

amphibology - intentionally ambiguous statements
"customers who think our waiters are rude should see the manager"
"Thank you so much for the book, I shall lose no time in reading it" (Disraeli)