Gaston Dorren – författare

If you were to master the twenty languages discussed in Babel, you could talk with three quarters of the world's population. But what makes these languages stand out amid the world's estimated 6,500 tongues?Gaston Dorren delves deep into the linguistic oddities and extraordinary stories of these diverse lingua francas, tracing their origins and their sometimes bloody rise to greatness. He deciphers their bewildering array of scripts, presents the gems and gaps in their vocabularies and charts their coinages and loans. He even explains how their grammars order their speakers' worldview. Combining linguistics and cultural history, Babel takes us on an intriguing tour of the world, addressing such questions as how tiny Portugal spawned a major world language and Holland didn't, why Japanese women talk differently from men, what it means for Russian to be 'related' to English, and how non-alphabetic scripts, such as those of India and China, do the same job as our 26 letters. Not to mention the conundrums of why Vietnamese has four forms for 'I', or how Tamil pronouns keep humans and deities apart.Babel will change the way you look at the world and how we all speak.

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.

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.

If you were to master the twenty languages discussed in Babel, you could talk with three quarters of the world''s population. But what makes these languages stand out amid the world''s estimated 6,500 tongues?Gaston Dorren delves deep into the linguistic oddities and extraordinary stories of these diverse lingua francas, tracing their origins and their sometimes bloody rise to greatness. He deciphers their bewildering array of scripts, presents the gems and gaps in their vocabularies and charts their coinages and loans. He even explains how their grammars order their speakers'' worldview. Combining linguistics and cultural history, Babel takes us on an intriguing tour of the world, addressing such questions as how tiny Portugal spawned a major world language and Holland didn''t, why Japanese women talk differently from men, what it means for Russian to be ''related'' to English, and how non-alphabetic scripts, such as those of India and China, do the same job as our 26 letters. Not to mention the conundrums of why Vietnamese has four forms for ''I'', or how Tamil pronouns keep humans and deities apart.Babel will change the way you look at the world and how we all speak.

Warum wir sprechen, was wir sprechenWieso sind die Holländer wahre Könige des Genderbendings? Warum klingt Spanisch wie ein Maschinengewehr? Was haben Sepp und Ferrari gemeinsam? Und weshalb ist Litauen der beste Ort, um den Ursprung der europäischen Sprachen kennenzulernen?Gaston Dorren ist ein multilinguales Genie. In kurzweiligen Kapiteln geht er den Kuriositäten rund um Europas Sprachen auf den Grund und erzählt, was diese jeweils so einzigartig macht. Dabei beschäftigt er sich nicht nur mit ihrer Herkunft, sondern hebt vor allem verblüffende Besonderheiten hervor. Von der Grammatik bis zur Sprechweise, von der Gesellschaft bis zur Politik greift er die verschiedensten Themen auf. Er nimmt den Leser mit auf eine unterhaltsame Reise voller kluger Beobachtungen und zeichnet so ein neues, spannendes Bild der europäischen Nationen.

S lingvisticheskoj tochki zreniya Evropa – ehto yazykovoj pirog, kotoryj sostoit iz neskol''kih bol''shih kuskov, mnozhestva melkih i gorstki kroshek. Ustnoe i pis''mennoe mnogoobrazie yazykov nashego kontinenta vyglyadit vpechatlyayushche i neveroyatno uvlekatel''no. "Lingvo" – ehto yazykovoj pejzazh nashego kontinenta, zhivopisnye lingvisticheskie realii kotorogo dostojny pristal''nogo vnimaniya, ogromnogo interesa i iskrennego voskhishcheniya.