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Description
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Six millennia and sixty languages in brief yet knowledge-packed chapters. Whether you frequently travel across the European continent or are a "armchair traveler," reading this book will take you on a delightful journey guided by linguistics and cultural history.
Thanks to humor and apt examples, Gaston Dorren introduces us to most European languages and dialects, presenting their commonalities, differences, and significant quirks. Surprising and clever, this book will change the way you think about the languages of our continent.
Why is Finnish the easiest language in Europe? What is the ancestor of most European languages? Why do Spaniards chatter away at a crazy pace, as if a machine gun is going off? Do English and Chinese resemble each other? Which European languages are at risk of disappearing?
THE PRESS SAID
A truly fascinating and incredibly entertaining tour of Europe's linguistic landscape. Sunday Telegraph
The evolution and quirks of the languages of Europe in an enlightening study of something many of us take for granted. Publishers Weekly
Educational and pleasantly ironic… organized into sections about languages and their families, history, politics, writing, vocabulary, grammar. Guardian
Read an excerpt
Once upon a time, thousands of years ago (no one knows exactly when), in a distant place (no one knows exactly where), there was a language that no one speaks today, whose name has been forgotten, if it ever had a name. Children learned this language from their parents, just like children do today, and in turn, they passed it on to their own children, and so on for generations and generations. As all these centuries passed, the old language constantly changed. It was something like a broken telephone: the last player hears something very different from what the first person actually said. In this case, we are the last players.
And not only us who speak English, of course. But also those who speak Dutch – which is practically the same. And German, which isn't very different either. And Spanish, Polish, and Greek, because if you look carefully enough, you'll see that even these are a little similar to English. And even further away, there are other languages, such as Armenian, Kurdish, and Nepali, where you'll need to look much more carefully to see the family resemblance.
Manufacturer
Product Guides
- Author
- Gaston Dorren
- Publisher
- Metaichmio
- Genre
- Linguistics Books, -
- Subtitle
- A Journey to Europe
- Cover
- Soft
- Number of Pages
- 312
- Publication Date
- 2022
- Dimensions
- 15x23 cm
- Language
- Greek
- ISBN-13
- 9786180328950
Important information
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