Call number
914 DOR
Collection
Genres
Publication
Atlantic Monthly Press (2015), 320 pages
Description
"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.
Media reviews
Are some languages worse than others? The question might sound silly, but in this entertaining exercise in "language tourism" (the book's original Dutch title), the author isn't frightened of making judgments. He thinks lenition – the habit in Welsh of "changing a word's first letter for no
In the author's native Dutch, the gendering of nouns is changing in what he calls "a blatant act of linguistic sexism". (Everything that is not obviously a female living thing is a "he".) Nor will Anglophone readers of this edition feel smug after Dorren's excellent dissection of the illogicality of English, with its 20 different vowel sounds, impossible spelling and idiosyncratic formations. (Very reasonably, Dorren wonders: "Why does English say 'I want you to listen' rather than the more straightforward 'I want that you listen'?")
Show More
apparent reason" – is just "mindboggling", and generally that "Gaelic spelling is flawed … wasteful, arcane and outdated". The "ludicrous" variety of cases in Slovak amounts to "chaos", while Breton's system of naming numbers makes mental arithmetic unnecessarily difficult.In the author's native Dutch, the gendering of nouns is changing in what he calls "a blatant act of linguistic sexism". (Everything that is not obviously a female living thing is a "he".) Nor will Anglophone readers of this edition feel smug after Dorren's excellent dissection of the illogicality of English, with its 20 different vowel sounds, impossible spelling and idiosyncratic formations. (Very reasonably, Dorren wonders: "Why does English say 'I want you to listen' rather than the more straightforward 'I want that you listen'?")
Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member akblanchard
In sixty brief chapters, Gaston Dorren's Lingo takes readers on a whirlwind tour of European languages, from the "big five" Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian), to more obscure tongues such as Slovene, Manx, and Gagauz.
The book is intended to be breezy, anecdotal
Moreover, in the chapter comparing English and Chinese, Dorren sets up a straw man argument that English became a world language because it is "simpler" than languages with gendered nouns, declensions, and mutations (a feature of Welsh). Even though it lacks these features, English, with its weird spelling and pronunciation, is by no means simple, and I don't think anyone out there thinks English became an international language because of its own characteristics.
If you enjoy reading about languages, you may find this book worth picking up. Just don't expect too much from it.
The book is intended to be breezy, anecdotal
Show More
and entertaining. Some chapters, such as the one on the extinction of the Dalmatian language, shine, but others fall flat. For example, the chapter on Ossetian, the so-called "tenth branch" on the Indo-European language family tree, is a mere four paragraphs long and gives readers very little idea what the language is like. Moreover, in the chapter comparing English and Chinese, Dorren sets up a straw man argument that English became a world language because it is "simpler" than languages with gendered nouns, declensions, and mutations (a feature of Welsh). Even though it lacks these features, English, with its weird spelling and pronunciation, is by no means simple, and I don't think anyone out there thinks English became an international language because of its own characteristics.
If you enjoy reading about languages, you may find this book worth picking up. Just don't expect too much from it.
Show Less
LibraryThing member annbury
This book takes an amusing look at the peculiarities of several different European languages, making it quite clear by the time the tour is over that all are very peculiar -- except of course one's own. Do not mistake this for a serious guide to the languages of Europe. The author makes it very
Show More
clear that that is not what he has in mind, and does, at the end of the book, offer a bibliography that includes several more serious works. It is rather a potpourri for language mavens -- fun, if rather fleeting in the impression it creates. Show Less
LibraryThing member espadana
A fun little book. A trip through all the European languages using each one to illustrate language families, how they evolved, how they influenced each other and the many oddities and similarities between them. Not an in-depth analysis by any means, but full of interesting points and well written.
LibraryThing member arthurnoerve
A good book for any amateur language lover/linguist.
The section on Esperanto was a little pessimistic and maybe not entirely correct, but hey I'm no Esperantist... Since I read the Norwegian translation it could just have been a weird translation that skewed some original sense of humour.
Otherwise
The section on Esperanto was a little pessimistic and maybe not entirely correct, but hey I'm no Esperantist... Since I read the Norwegian translation it could just have been a weird translation that skewed some original sense of humour.
Otherwise
Show More
a good read indeed. Show Less
LibraryThing member starbox
"The stories about Europe's scores of languages are compelling",, 25 December 2015
This review is from: Lingo: A Language Spotter's Guide to Europe (Hardcover)
An interesting tour around the languages of Europe, from Faroese to Armenian to sign language to Esperanto. The author looks at why some
As he writes in the introduction, it is "a guidebook of sorts, but in no sense an encyclopedia...it is intended as the French so enticingly put it, as an amuse-bouche."
Generally a light and entertaining work - even those who are knowledgable on the subject of languages will find plenty here that they were unaware of.
This review is from: Lingo: A Language Spotter's Guide to Europe (Hardcover)
An interesting tour around the languages of Europe, from Faroese to Armenian to sign language to Esperanto. The author looks at why some
Show More
tongues remain untouched over centuries while others change out of all recognition; considers dying languages, looks at the work of various linguists and introduces a plethora of odd and interesting linguistic facts.As he writes in the introduction, it is "a guidebook of sorts, but in no sense an encyclopedia...it is intended as the French so enticingly put it, as an amuse-bouche."
Generally a light and entertaining work - even those who are knowledgable on the subject of languages will find plenty here that they were unaware of.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jellyfishjones
Unlike many "linquistics for laypeople" books, this one successfully bridges the divide between hardcore language geeks and people who are just a bit curious, and it does so all while being incredibly witty, entertaining, and accessible.
LibraryThing member jkdavies
I like reading about linguistics, and the development of language. This book was interesting but not really satisfying as it felt like it was only scratching the surface in it's very short chapters.
Worth dipping into again but probably not a full re-read.
Worth dipping into again but probably not a full re-read.
Pages
320
ISBN
0802124070 / 9780802124074