Lingo: A Language Spotter's Guide to Europe
Nov 2014 · Profile Books
3.9star
10 reviewsreport
Ebook
392
Pages
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About this ebook
Welcome to Europe as you've never known it before, seen through the peculiarities of its languages and dialects. Combining linguistics and cultural history, Gaston Dorren takes us on an intriguing tour of the continent, from Proto-Indo-European (the common ancestor of most European languages) to the rise and rise of English, via the complexities of Welsh plurals and Czech pronunciation. Along the way we learn why Esperanto will never catch on, how the language of William the Conqueror lives on in the Channel Islands and why Finnish is the easiest European language.
Surprising, witty and full of extraordinary facts, this book will change the way you think about the languages around you. Polyglot Gaston Dorren might even persuade you that English is like Chinese.
Surprising, witty and full of extraordinary facts, this book will change the way you think about the languages around you. Polyglot Gaston Dorren might even persuade you that English is like Chinese.
Ratings and reviews
3.9
10 reviews
Ross Laird
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December 13, 2014
Great potted history and grammatical description of Europe's languages. Entertaining as a guide. Top tip to avoid learning Faroese - which surely can only make it more popular?
Kieran Mekota
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April 10, 2016
Read this all in a day - well worth a read and something to come back to time and time again.
About the author
Gaston Dorren has written two Dutch books on language and contributes regularly to Onze Taal, a popular linguistics magazine. A true polyglot, Gaston speaks Dutch, Limburgish, English, German and Spanish, and reads French, Afrikaans, Frisian, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Luxembourgish and Esperanto.
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