Books: Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages

 

It's been three years since I started learning Vietnamese, but it's been slow going.  That's mostly because I'm learning it by myself, but also partly because my native English is linguistically less related to Vietnamese than it is to, say, Spanish or German. All those languages, and the other top 20 most popular languages in the world, are profiled by author Gaston Dorren in Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages.

The book starts out with Tiếng Việt, the 20th most spoken language, and runs all the way to English, the world's most spoken language (I'm somewhat heartened by the fact that Dorren, a polyglot with the benefit of people to talk to and a visit to Vietnam, still has trouble learning the language). Along the way, there is a lot of insight into how language reflects (and sometimes drives) wars, trade, and other interactions between different people. It's an easy read and a fun book for anyone learning a foreign language.