Friday, September 2, 2022

Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages

 


Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages by Gaston Dorren is a delightful and entertaining voyage through some of the world’s most interesting and influential languages. Dorren is not hung up on method or style; the work varies to a great degree, much to his credit and the book's quality.  He also destroys the notion that a lingua franca is used because it is easy - and somehow inevitable.  They are not; power, economics, and social hegemony create them.  A language does not have a destiny.

No comments:

Post a Comment