Gaston Dorren

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 itas 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.

Around the World in Twenty Languages

Babel

Six thousand years. Sixty languages. One “brisk and breezy” whirlwind armchair tour of Europe “bulg[ing] with linguistic trivia” (The Wall Street Journal). Take a trip of the tongue across the continent in this fascinating, hilarious and highly edifying exploration of the many ways and whys of Euro-speaks—its idiosyncrasies, its histories, commonalities, and differences. Most European languages are descended from a single ancestor, a language not unlike Sanskrit known as Proto-Indo-European (or PIE for short), but the continent’s ever-changing borders and cultures have given rise to a linguistic and cultural diversity that is too often forgotten in discussions of Europe as a political entity. Lingo takes us into today’s remote mountain villages of Switzerland, where Romansh is still the lingua franca, to formerly Soviet Belarus, a country whose language was Russified by the Bolsheviks, to Sweden, where up until the 1960s polite speaking conventions required that one never use the word “you.” “In this bubbly linguistic endeavor, journalist and polyglot Dorren thoughtfully walks readers through the weird evolution of languages” (Publishers Weekly), and not just the usual suspects—French, German, Yiddish, irish, and Spanish, Here, too are the esoteric—Manx, Ossetian, Esperanto, Gagauz, and Sami, and that global headache called English. In its sixty bite-sized chapters, Dorret offers quirky and hilarious tidbits of illuminating facts, and also dispels long-held lingual misconceptions (no, Eskimos do not have 100 words for snow). Guaranteed to change the way you think about language, Lingo is a “lively and insightful . . . unique, page-turning book” (Minneapolis Star Tribune).

Around Europe in Sixty Languages

Lingo

Jenny Audring

Frauke Watson

"Spins the reader on a whirlwind tour of sixty European languages and dialects, sharing quirky moments from their histories and exploring their commonalities and differences ... [and taking] us into today's remote mountain villages of Switzerland, where Romansh is still the lingua franca, to formerly Soviet Belarus, a country whose language was Russified by the Bolsheviks, to Sweden, where up until the 1960s polite speaking conventions required that one never use the word 'you' in conversation"--Amazon.com.

Alison Edwards

w sześćdziesiąt języków dookoła Europy

Gadka

Beschrijving in korte hoofdstukken van 69 Europese talen, waarbij zeer uiteenlopende fenomenen aan de orde komen, zoals: grammaticale verschijnselen, wordingsgeschiedenis, spreektaal, schrijftaal, spelling, uitspraak, onderlinge relaties, brugtalen.

Dwars door Europa in 69 talen

Lingua

SIAMO QUELLO CHE PARLIAMO «Sorprendente e divertentissimo.» The Times «Gaston Dorren è sia un eccelso linguista, sia uno scrittore meraviglioso.» Sunday Mail «Un autore che insegna e affascina. Un viaggio tra le lingue estremamente divertente.» Publishers Weekly «Spiega in che modo le lingue si evolvono, si diffondono e sopravvivono.» Booklist «Una guida geniale e affascinante attraverso le curiosità delle lingue più parlate al mondo.» Kirkus Review Sono oltre seimila le lingue vive in tutto il mondo, ma è sufficiente conoscere le venti descritte in Babele – alcune diffuse come il francese e lo spagnolo, altre misteriose come il malese e il bengalese – per poter conversare con oltre tre quarti della popolazione della Terra. Cosa rende così speciali queste ideali lingue franche? Gaston Dorren, che di idiomi ne conosce quindici, risale alle origini della loro – a volte sanguinosa – grandezza, porta alla luce infinite curiosità, e dà risposta a innumerevoli interrogativi: perché, per esempio, il Portogallo potenza coloniale ha generato una lingua diffusissima, ma lo stesso non è accaduto per l’Olanda? Perché in Giappone la lingua delle donne è diversa da quella degli uomini? Perché la lingua tamil utilizza pronomi diversi per indicare uomini e divinità? Unendo linguistica, storia culturale e gli spassosi alti e i bassi delle sue personali battaglie con lo studio del vietnamita, Dorren ci regala un racconto unico che cambierà per sempre il nostro modo di guardare (e ascoltare) il mondo.

Le 20 lingue che spiegano il mondo

Babele

Eine verbale Reise durch Europa

Sprachen

Delves into the linguistic oddities and extraordinary stories of global tongues, tracing their origins and tracking their sometimes bloody rise to greatness. Learn why Russian has no word for blue, how Turkish stopped borrowing words, and why Arabic is possibly the hardest global language to learn

From the celebrated author of Lingo, a whistle-stop tour of the world's twenty most-spoken languages, exploring history, geography, linguistics, and culture--showing how the language we speak reflects our view of the world

wat er mooi, gek en fout is aan ons Nederlands

Vakantie in eigen taal / druk 1

Warum wir sprechen, was wir sprechen Wieso sind die Holländer wahre Könige des Genderbendings? Warum klingt Spanisch wie ein Maschinengewehr? Was haben Sepp und Ferrari gemeinsam? Und weshalb ist Litauen der beste Ort, um den Ursprung der europäischen Sprachen kennenzulernen? Gaston Dorren ist ein multilinguales Genie. In kurzweiligen Kapiteln geht er den Kuriositäten rund um Europas Sprachen auf den Grund und erzählt, was diese jeweils so einzigartig macht. Dabei beschäftigt er sich nicht nur mit ihrer Herkunft, sondern hebt vor allem verblüffende Besonderheiten hervor. Von der Grammatik bis zur Sprechweise, von der Gesellschaft bis zur Politik greift er die verschiedensten Themen auf. Er nimmt den Leser mit auf eine unterhaltsame Reise voller kluger Beobachtungen und zeichnet so ein neues, spannendes Bild der europäischen Nationen.

EINE REISE ZU DEN MEISTGESPROCHENEN SPRACHEN DER WELT Wie konnte das kleine Portugal eine Weltsprache hervorbringen und Holland nicht? Warum sprechen japanische Frauen anders als japanische Männer? Und wieso funktionieren nicht-alphabetische Schriften genauso gut wie unsere 26 Buchstaben? In seinem phantastisch geschriebenen, höchst unterhaltsamen Buch porträtiert Gaston Dorren die größten Sprachen des Planeten und erklärt, was sie so besonders macht. Drei Viertel aller Menschen sprechen die 20 Sprachen, von denen dieses Buch erzählt. Aber was zeichnet sie vor den übrigen 6.000 Sprachen der Welt aus? Gaston Dorren taucht in ihre ungewöhnlichen Geschichten ein, erklärt ihre Herkunft und ihren teils von Gewalt geprägten Aufstieg. Er entziffert ihre verwirrende Vielzahl von Schriften, stellt die Juwelen und die Lücken in ihrem Vokabular vor, erläutert ihre linguistischen Absonderlichkeiten und vermittelt uns, wie die Grammatik einer Sprache und die Weltsicht ihrer Sprecher zusammenhängen. Sein Buch nimmt uns auf eine einzigartige Weltreise mit, die uns einem Großteil der Menschheit näher bringt. Von Vietnamesisch bis Englisch - eine Reise zu nahen und fernen Sprachen Ein Buch für Weltreisende und Sprachverliebte

Die größten Sprachen und was sie so besonders macht

In 20 Sprachen um die Welt

“Babel is an endlessly interesting book, and you don’t have to have any linguistic training to enjoy it . . . it’s just so much fun to read.” —NPR English is the world language, except that 80 percent of the world doesn’t speak it. Linguist Gaston Dorren calculates that to speak fluently with half of the world’s people in their mother tongues, you’d need to know no fewer than twenty languages. In Babel, he sets out to explore these top twenty world languages, which range from the familiar (French, Spanish) to the surprising (Malay, Javanese, Bengali). Whisking readers along on a delightful journey, he traces how these languages rose to greatness while others fell away, and shows how speakers today handle the foibles of their mother tongues. Whether showcasing tongue-tying phonetics, elegant but complicated writing scripts, or 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 outsiders. Babel reveals 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 also shares his experiences studying Vietnamese in Hanoi, debunks ten myths about Chinese characters, and discovers the region where Swahili became the lingua franca. Witty and utterly fascinating, Babel will change how you look at and listen to the world. “Word nerds of every strain will enjoy this wildly entertaining linguistic study.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Gaston Dorren

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