Babel Around the World in 20 Languages
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15
Ratings2
Average rating2
“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)
Reviews with the most likes.
One of the most poorly written books I've had the misfortune of reading.
Each chapter seems disconnected, no semblance of cohesion. Poorly researched as well. I can point out several instances in the Korean, Tamil and Hindi/Urdu chapters where the language and the culture has been misrepresented.
It feel like the book was written with a strong white lens, and it reflects in the almost degrading way he talks about the Asian languages.
I had a look at some do the references he has used for the chapters, and it seems that for most of the Asian languages, the references are quite dated (1997/99 or even early 2000s) and if it happens to be from the same decade as when the book was written, it isn't from a native speaker. It's also questionable that the references don't all seem to be academic texts.
I can go on about how poor this book is. I wish I could erase the memory of having read this book.
If I could, I would give this book negative 5 stars. I would settle for zero stars as well. But 1 will have to suffice.
I was taking notes at first. Then, I was running out of time on my loan from the library and had to get creative with my reading time. This book was interesting and made me appreciate some of these languages more. Though it was entertaining, there were parts where it felt like the author was birdwalking to the point I forgot what language I was reading about. I may read it again at a later date when I finally have a firm grasp on my second (or third) language.
Very interesting! Each chapter is about one of the 20 most used languages in the world in reverse order. But Dorren highlights one particular aspect of language in each chapter as well : the script, the verbs, the history, and so on. Mix of general audience and linguistic wonk.
