Lingo
豆瓣
A Language Spotter's Guide to Europe
Gaston Dorren
简介
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.
目录
Introduction
What Europeans speak
PART ONE Next of tongue
1 The life of PIE | Lithuanian
2 The separated siblings | Finno-Ugric Languages
3 Pieces of a broken pitcher | Romansh
4 Mummy dearest | French
5 Know your Slovek from your Slovane | Slavic languages
6 The linguistic orphanage | Balkan languages
7 The tenth branch | Ossetian
PART TWO Past perfect discontinuous
Languages and their history
8 The peaceful expansionist? | German
9 Portugal’s mother’s tongue | Galician
10 A language in DK | Danish
11 The spoils of defeat | Channel Island Norman
12 Languages of exile | Karaim, Ladino and Yiddish
13 Frozen in time | Icelandic
PART THREE War and peace
Languages and politics
14 The democratic language | Norwegian
15 Two addresses to the people of Belarus | Belarus(s)ian
16 Kleinsteinish and its neighbours | Luxembourgish
17 Longing for languagehood | Scots and Frisian
18 Much a-du about you, and him | Swedish
19 Four countries – and more than a club | Catalan
20 Four languages and zero goodwill | Serbo-Croatian
PART FOUR Werds, wirds, wurds ...
Written and spoken
21 ‘Háček!’ – ‘Bless you’ | Czech
22 Szczesny, Pszkit and Korzeniowski | Polish
23 Broad and slender tweets | Scots Gaelic
24 Learning your A to Я | Russian
25 Pin the name on the language | Estonian
26 The Iberian machine gun | Spanish
27 Mountains of dialects | Slovene
28 Hide and speak? | Shelta and Anglo-Romani
PART FIVE Nuts and bolts
Languages and their vocabulary
29 Export/import | Greek
30 Arrival in Porto | Portuguese
31 Meet the Snorbs | Sorbian
32 From our Vašingtona correspondent | Latvian
33 Small, sweet, slim, sturdy, sexy, stupid little women |
34 A snowstorm in a teacup | Sami
35 Deciphering the language of numbers | Breton
PART SIX Talking by the book
Languages and their grammar
36 Gender-bending | Dutch
37 A case history | Romani
38 A much-needed merger | Bulgarian-Slovak
39 Nghwm starts with a C | Welsh
40 Strictly ergative | Basque
41 Note to self | Ukrainian
PART SEVEN Intensive care
Languages on the brink and beyond
42 Networking in Monaco | Monégasque
43 A narrow escape | Irish
44 No laughing matter | Gagauz
45 The death of a language | Dalmatian
46 The church of Kernow | Cornish
47 Back from the brink | Manx
PART EIGHT Movers and shakers
Linguists who left their mark
48 Ĺudovít Štúr, the hero linguist | Slovak
49 The father of Albanology | Albanian
50 An unexpected standard | Germanic languages
51 The no-hoper | Esperanto
52 The national hero who wasn’t | Macedonian
53 A godless alphabet | Turkish
PART NINE Warts and all
Linguistic portrait studies
54 Spell as you speak | Finnish
55 Romans north of Hadrian’s Wall | Faroese
56 A meaningful silence | Sign languages
57 Հայերեն բադակտուց | Armenian
58 Plain lonely | Hungarian
59 An Afro-Asiatic in Europe | Maltese
60 The global headache | English
