For linguists and readers truly thrilled by the meticulous study of languages.
Quirky facts about 60 European languages.
In his debut book in English, Dutch linguist and journalist Dorren, who speaks six languages and reads nine more, explores the origins, families, vocabularies, and grammars of 60 languages, dead (Dalmation), dying (Gaeltacht Irish), and alive. The political map of the continent appears as “a mass of solid monochromatic blocks,” the author writes, but a map of languages looks “more like a multi-colored mosaic in many places, while in other regions it resembles a floor that’s been sprinkled with confetti.” While he reveals many intriguing nuggets of information about languages from the familiar (French, German, Spanish) to the arcane (Manx, Ossetian, Sorbian), he assumes that readers have a fairly sophisticated knowledge of grammatical terms: absolutives, augmentatives, demonstratives, case, reflexive possessive pronouns, and ergative verbs may not be in every reader’s vocabulary. It helps to know the difference between subject and object, too, in order to grasp why the terms “agent” and “patient” are more appropriate to understanding Basque grammar. At the end of each chapter, Dorren cites a few words imported from that language into English: “anchovy,” from Portuguese; “avalanche” from Romansh (through French); “get” and “egg” from Early Norwegian. But nothing, sadly, from Latvian, or from Monégasque, a subdialect of Ligurian, spoken by about 100 people in Monaco. Besides borrowed words, Dorren suggests idiosyncratic terms that might well be taken up by English speakers: “Beloruchka,” Russian for a “ ‘white-hand person’; somebody who shirks dirty work”; or, from Slovak, “Proznovit,” “to make someone’s phone ring just once in the hope that they will call back.” The author describes his book as an “amuse-bouche,” a tasty morsel that gives diners a hint of a chef’s talent, and he certainly displays his own linguistic talents and enthusiasm for languages. Too often, however, he tells what people speak and where rather than how a language transformed and why.
For linguists and readers truly thrilled by the meticulous study of languages.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2407-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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