A quirky language-lovers tour of the twenty most-spoken languages in the world - what puts them a cut above the other six thousand?
Gaston Dorren is the author of Lingo, a book on European languages that, as the Telegraph put it, is 'both genuinely interesting and enormous fun [with his] impressive ability to flip with ease from jokes and surprising facts to the discussion of complex linguistic ideas'. He is a regular contributor to the popular linguistics magazine Onze Taal, and edits the Language Writer blog. 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. While writing Babel, he also tried to learn Vietnamese.
Eye-opening and thoroughly entertaining ... [Dorren] is wonderful
company: chatty, informative, enthusiastic.
*The Times*
Hugely readable ... Dorren is both an intimidatingly gifted
linguist and a wonderfully eloquent writer. You couldn't wish for a
better guide to the wonders of the world's bewildering array of
tongues.
*Mail on Sunday*
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