BOOK REVIEW: Mother Tongue

This is the second book I’ve read called Mother Tongue. The first being Bill Bryson’s great book on English words in general. This one focuses on womanly words. Being an English Major turned librarian who’s fascinated with etymology I’ve spent my life surrounded by women and have long been aware of how misogynist our world and our language is. But I still learned a great deal from this book.

Here are the highlights:

Man originally mean human, think mankind. And “[w]if and wer, in the oldest English, mean ‘woman’ and ‘man’, regardless of marital status. So wifman is a woman-human.” (2) “wer” is also why that legendary creature is called a werewolf aka a man-wolf.

Vagina comes from Latin for sword’s scabbard. (28) Male-centered language much?

Hyster- words come from the Greek word for womb. (35) which is the problem with the word hysterical, it basically says if you’re driven by your womb, you be crazy. And since only women have wombs, only women can be crazy. I know as we move beyond a binary gender world, non-binary people can have wombs but I wanted to mention this bit of the book because it highlights how misunderstood mental health has always been. We’re getting better, but it still isn’t good.

Bede’s Historia translated from Latin into Old English between 883 and 930 has the first written record of menstruation; Monao-aol, which is transliterated as month-disease. (49) And that’s where the unease with periods began. I will admit reading such unabashed and detailed accounts of periods made me uneasy. The cultural taboo is strong! 

An early name for the clitoris was “the hayward [boss] of the corpse’s dale [vulva].” (72) I’m not sure why the vulva was called the “corpse’s dale’!

A 1668 anatomy book said the clitoris brought forth the seed. (74) Aka push the button to release the egg for the sperm to fertilize. Wow. 

The word pornography came from the Greek porne, “a prostitute’. So it originally meant the writings of a prostitute. (86)

Linnaeus named creatures who feed off their young milk from mammary glands, Mammalian, or mammals after the mammary glands. (138)

“Hlaef-dige, an Old English word combining hlaef (the forerunner of Modern English loaf) and dige (kneader), [as in kneading dough] eventually becomes our la-dy.” (166)

The etymology of “girl” is unknown and until 1530, the word could refer to a child of either sex. (190)

Two British women per week are murdered by their partner. (215) Holy hell…

Until 2003 it wasn’t possible for a husband to rape his wife in England. (219) Holier hell…

“…rapt (which, if you think about it, is just the past tense of the verb to rape akin to dreamt or slept).” (233) Ah, sexual violence hiding in plain sight!

The word gender has only been used to describe male and female since the 1940s. Sex rôle, social-sex role, or just rôle had all been used for that. (240)

“Eve was said to be created by God for the role of being Adam’s helper. I wonder what Adam needed help with? There can’t have been any housework in Eden, can there?” (245)

Sojourner Truth never said “Ain’t I a woman” that was Francis Barker Gage, 12 years later. She said “I am a woman’s rights.” (260-1) Even with an end note, this struck me as sensationalism that bent the (Sojourner) Truth. So I looked it up elsewhere and is, indeed, true: https://sojournertruthmemorial.org/sojourner-truth/her-words/

Your mother tongue is so named because it’s generally learned by your female caregivers. (267)

In the acknowledgments she gives this fun source: https://leme.library.utoronto.ca (271)