Marko Jevtić

“Not only were the Anglo-Saxons relatively uncultured, they were also pagan, a fact rather quaintly preserved in the names of four of our weekdays, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, which respectively commemorate the gods Tiw, Woden, and Thor, and Woden’s wife, Frig. (Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, to complete the picture, take their names from Saturn, the sun, and the moon.)”
― Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

“In 1649 the laws were tightened even further—to the extent that swearing at a parent became punishable by death.”
― Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

“Almost all languages change. A rare exception is written Icelandic, which has changed so little that modern Icelanders can read sagas written a thousand years ago, and if Leif Ericson appeared on the streets of Reykjavik he could find his way around, allowing for certain difficulties over terms like airport and quarter-pound cheeseburger.”
― Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

“Before the shift house was pronounced “hoose” (it still is in Scotland), mode was pronounced “mood,” and home rhymed with “gloom,” which is why Domesday Book is pronounced and sometimes called Doomsday. (The word has nothing to do with the modern word doom, incidentally. It is related to the domes- in domestic.)”
― Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way