Babel

Among many other things, Babel will teach you why Russian has no word for blue, how and why Turkish stopped borrowing words from other languages, and why Arabic might be the hardest language to learn. Dorren forecasts the future of Chinese script, re-examines the Latin alphabet's gory past, and explains why you have to be very careful not to offend someone when speaking Javanese, which offers a choice of five different registers or khrong for most words in the language, depending on the social class of the person being addressed. Not a language for the faint-hearted. Witty, fascinating and utterly compelling, and a lot easier than learning twenty languages, Babel will change the way you look at the world and how it speaks.