Lingo

A Language Spotter's Guide to Europe

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Gaston Dorren, Jonathan Buckley, Alison Edwards: Lingo (2015, Profile Books Limited)

304 pages

English language

Published Nov. 13, 2015 by Profile Books Limited.

ISBN:
978-1-78125-417-2
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2 stars (2 reviews)

"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.

5 editions

Something for everyone, plenty for none

3 stars

As a survey of trivia on Europe's languages, this has morsels to whet most any appetite. But the bites are quite small, and it's hard to imagine anyone being interested in everything on offer. Such is the nature of a survey with dozens of short chapters, many of which are necessarily on more obscure topics.

Generally entertaining, but I skipped through a fair bit of it. It did bring to mind the obscure things I'd always wondered about, such as Romansh (did I even spell that right?).

Subjects

  • Language and culture
  • Europe, social life and customs