A review by sistermagpie
Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages by Gaston Dorren

3.0

A fun trip through the top 20 languages on Earth--that is, the languages with the most speakers, from Vietnamese to English. The chapters aren't too long and very different from each other. The author usually finds one thing to focus on with each language, be it history, writing or a certain quirk, and this gives him an entry to talk about languages in general. I wonder if somebody reading the book might end up taken with one of the languages he introduces to the point of wanting to study it--I wouldn't be surprised. It seems especially handy for English speakers who might never really think about other languages and how completely different they can be.