Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages by Dorren, Gaston

Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages

English is the world language, except that most of the world doesn't speak it--only one in five...
¥5,583 JPY
¥5,583 JPY
SKU: 9780802128799
Product Type: Books
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Author: Gaston Dorren
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Subtotal: ¥5,583
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Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages by Dorren, Gaston

Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages

¥5,583

Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages

¥5,583
Author: Gaston Dorren
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
English is the world language, except that most of the world doesn't speak it--only one in five people does. Dorren calculates that to speak fluently with half of the world's 7.4 billion people in their mother tongues, you would need to know no fewer than twenty languages. He sets out to explore these top twenty world languages, which range from the familiar (French, Spanish) to the surprising (Malay, Javanese, Bengali). Babel whisks the reader on a delightful journey to every continent of the world, tracing how these world languages rose to greatness while others fell away and showing how speakers today handle the foibles of their mother tongues. Whether showcasing tongue-tying phonetics or elegant but complicated writing scripts, and mind-bending quirks of grammar, Babel vividly illustrates that mother tongues are like nations: each has its own customs and beliefs that seem as self-evident to those born into it as they are surprising to the outside world.

Among many other things, Babel will teach you why modern Turks can't read books that are a mere 75 years old, what it means in practice for Russian and English to be relatives, and how Japanese developed separate "dialects" for men and women. Dorren lets you in on his personal trials and triumphs while studying Vietnamese in Hanoi, debunks ten widespread myths about Chinese characters, and discovers that Swahili became the lingua franca in a part of the world where people routinely speak three or more languages. Witty, fascinating and utterly compelling, Babel will change the way you look at and listen to the world and how it speaks.

Author: Gaston Dorren
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Published: 12/04/2018
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.70w x 1.50d
ISBN: 9780802128799


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 07/01/2018 pg. 51
Booklist 10/15/2018 pg. 6
Kirkus Reviews 10/01/2018
Library Journal 10/15/2018 pg. 65
Publishers Weekly 11/12/2018
Shelf Awareness 12/07/2018

About the Author
Gaston Dorren is a linguist, journalist, and polyglot. He speaks Dutch, Limburgish, English, German, French, and Spanish, and reads nine more languages. He is the author of Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty Languages, as well as two books in Dutch and the app, The Language Lover's Guide to Europe. Dorren lives in the Netherlands.

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