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Babel

Around the World in Twenty Languages
Jan 04, 2019danulb rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
Reads more like a collection of unrelated articles each on a different language. On the plus side, I learned a lot — even about languages I knew something about already like German and French. But the book lacks an overall coherence that made it feel more like a jumble. This goes all the way through. For instance, you might learn something of the intricacies of the Bengali script, but little else about it. Ditto for loan words from Arabic. Sure, the author has to find something interesting to say about each language, but each language felt isolated. The overall effect for me was disjointed. The book might best be read by picking a chapter you find interesting and then another wending around over weeks or months — not as a read through.