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Lingo
- Around Europe in Sixty Languages
- Narrated by: George Backman
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
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Publisher's summary
Whether you're a frequent visitor to Europe or just an armchair traveler, the surprising and extraordinary stories in Lingo will forever change the way you think about the continent and may even make you want to learn a new language.
Lingo spins the listener on a whirlwind tour of 60 European languages and dialects, sharing quirky moments from their histories and exploring their commonalities and differences. Most European languages are descended from a single ancestor, a language not unlike Sanskrit known as Proto-Indo-European (or PIE for short), but the continent's ever-changing borders and cultures have given rise to a linguistic and cultural diversity that is too often forgotten in discussions of Europe as a political entity.
Lingo takes us into today's remote mountain villages of Switzerland, where Romansh is still the lingua franca; to formerly Soviet Belarus, a country whose language was Russified by the Bolsheviks; to Sweden, where up until the 1960s polite speaking conventions required that one never use the word "you" in conversation, leading to tiptoeing questions of the form: "Would herr generaldirektör Rexed like a biscuit?"
Spanning six millenia and 60 languages in bite-size chapters, Lingo is a hilarious and highly edifying exploration of how Europe speaks.
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First published in 2000, Words and Rules remains one of Pinker's most provocative and accessible books, illuminating the fascinating relationship between the brain, the mind, and how language makes us humans.
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Amazing how much irregular verbs can teach.
- By Tristan on 04-10-16
By: Steven Pinker
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The Glamour of Grammar
- By: Roy Peter Clark
- Narrated by: Roy Peter Clark
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Early in the history of English, glamour and grammar were the same word, linked to enchantment and magical spells. Now grammar brings to mind language bullies and bored-out-of-their-skulls students. Roy Peter Clark, one of America’s most influential writing teachers, wants to change that by putting the glamour back into grammar.
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Wasteful
- By ABID on 12-05-13
By: Roy Peter Clark
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Babel No More
- The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners
- By: Michael Erard
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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We all learn at least one language as children. But what does it take to learn six languages...or seventy? In Babel No More, Michael Erard, "a monolingual with benefits," sets out on a quest to meet language superlearners and make sense of their mental powers. On the way he uncovers the secrets of historical figures like Italian cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti, who was said to speak seventy-two languages; Emil Krebs, a pugnacious German diplomat, who spoke sixty-eight languages; and Lomb Kat, a Hungarian who taught herself Russian by reading Russian romance novels.
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Heavy on anecdote, light on science
- By S. Yates on 07-15-16
By: Michael Erard
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The Riddle of the Labyrinth
- The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code
- By: Margalit Fox
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of Simon Winchester and Dava Sobel, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code tells one of the most intriguing stories in the history of language, masterfully blending history, linguistics, and cryptology with an elegantly wrought narrative. When famed archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed the ruins of a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greece's Classical Age, he discovered a cache of ancient tablets, Europe's earliest written records.
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Discovery and Translation of Linear B Script
- By Sires on 01-11-14
By: Margalit Fox
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The Lies That Bind
- Rethinking Identity
- By: Kwame Anthony Appiah
- Narrated by: Kwame Anthony Appiah
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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We all know how identities - notably, those of nationality, class, culture, race, and religion - are at the root of global conflict, but the more elusive truth is that these identities are created by conflict in the first place. In provocative, entertaining chapters, Kwame Anthony Appiah interweaves keen-edged argument with engrossing historical tales and reveals the tangled contradictions within the stories that define us.
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Not full of SJW nonsense
- By Frank on 10-22-18
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How to Speak and Write Correctly
- By: Joseph Devlin
- Narrated by: Shawn Grisden
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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This book has no pretension about it whatever -- it is neither a Manual of Rhetoric, expatiating on the dogmas of style, nor a Grammar full of arbitrary rules and exceptions. It is merely an effort to help ordinary, everyday people to express themselves in ordinary, everyday language, in a proper manner.
By: Joseph Devlin
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You Say Potato: A Book About Accents
- By: Ben Crystal, David Crystal
- Narrated by: David Crystal, Ben Crystal, Jane Savage, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Some people say 'sconn' while others say 'schown'. He says 'bath' while she says 'bahth'. You say 'potayto'. I say 'potahto'. And - wait a second, no one says 'potahto'. No one's ever said 'potahto'. Have they? From reconstructing Shakespeare's accent to the rise and fall of received pronunciation, actor Ben Crystal and his linguist father, David, travel the world in search of the stories of spoken English.
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Wish there were more native recordings.
- By Matt Dobler on 07-01-16
By: Ben Crystal, and others
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The Bonjour Effect
- The Secret Codes of French Conversation Revealed
- By: Julie Barlow, Jean-Benoit Nadeau
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow spent a decade traveling back and forth to Paris as well as living there. Yet one important lesson never seemed to sink in: how to communicate comfortably with the French, even when you speak their language. In The Bonjour Effect, Jean-Benoît and Julie chronicle the lessons they learned after they returned to France to live, for a year, with their twin daughters. They offer up all the lessons they learned and explain the most important aspect of all: the French don't communicate, they converse.
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Terrible French pronunciation
- By CA on 01-24-19
By: Julie Barlow, and others
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The Pun Also Rises
- How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics
- By: John Pollack
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 4 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The Pun Also Rises is an authoritative yet playful exploration of a practice that is common, in one form or another, to virtually every language on earth. At once entertaining and educational, this engaging book answers fundamental questions: Just what is a pun, and why do people make them? How did punning impact the development of human language, and how did that drive creativity and progress? And why, after centuries of decline, does the pun still matter?
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Punderful Little Book
- By B. Lane on 01-10-13
By: John Pollack
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Notes on a Century
- Reflections of a Middle East Historian
- By: Bernard Lewis, Buntzie Ellis Churchill
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Few historians end up as historical actors in their own right, but Bernard Lewis has both witnessed and participated in some of the key events of the last century. When we think of the Middle East, we see it in terms that he defined and articulated.In this exceptional memoir he shares stories of his wartime service in London and Cairo, decrypting intercepts for MI6, with sometimes unexpected consequences. After the war, he was the first Western scholar ever invited into the Ottoman archives in Istanbul.
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Can't Get Enough of the Book
- By Sanford H. on 12-11-13
By: Bernard Lewis, and others
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Memory Craft
- Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
- By: Lynne Kelly
- Narrated by: Nancy Linari
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Groundbreaking anthropologist and memory champion Lynne Kelly reveals how we can use ancient and traditional mnemonic methods to enhance and expand our memory.
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So grateful this is on Audible!
- By happy_reader on 02-19-22
By: Lynne Kelly
What listeners say about Lingo
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-26-19
Enjoyable linguistic trip around Europe
This was a very enjoyable overview of the languages spoken in Europe, from the most prominent to the more obscure. It's written for non-academics interested in languages (like me) and never gets boring. The narration was very good and added a touch of levity. I highly recommend Lingo for anyone interested in languages.
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- See Reverse
- 07-17-16
Introduction to a Wide World of Language
What did you love best about Lingo?
I like the "lightbulb" words at the end of each chapter. English is definitely missing components that are elegant in other languages!
What did you like best about this story?
I love the stories about each of the languages, and the varied style for each of them. With 60 languages to cover, I really enjoyed how the author would balance between deep historical coverage, and fun, tongue in cheek delivery. Gaston Dorren called out French as a language afraid to be away from its mother. Who does that? Definitely a (mostly) fun read.
What about George Backman’s performance did you like?
He definitely has fun with the delivery over the course of these stories.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
It's not a dramatic book, but there were a few times where laughter is appropriate.
Any additional comments?
If you're not a linguist, then you will have a lot to absorb from this book. I didn't sweat the details too much, and went with the flow. Backman is offering us a tour of Europe, so don't worry if you don't know which General won the battle, or which year the building was completed. The point is that there are a lot of languages, they've got some similarities, and some key differences.
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1 person found this helpful
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- John S.
- 08-31-16
Perfect narrator fit!
An overview of European languages, including several either dead, dying, or spoken as distinct "minority" languages in their countries. Easy to pick up and put down without losing any continuity; folks looking for something more in-depth might likely find themselves frustrated or disappointed. Excellent audio narration - Backman obviously went to great lengths to get the material down correctly.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous
- 03-09-16
Fascinating tour of European dialects
This book is a fascinating your of European dialects. It melds history and linguistics in a breezy, flowing story of each language. It's easy to listen to because each chapter is short and modular. But if you miss a bit of any chapter, it's hard to gather what the author is getting at. Still, it's captivating enough for a few listens. I recommend.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Michael
- 04-15-19
Amazing breadth
Although I’m sure the author had a lot of help with a lot of the languages, the sheer breadth of knowledge in this book is rather amazing.
The narration is also very good, although there is a wee bit of cognitive dissonance between the author’s clear British viewpoint and the narrator’s American accent.
All in all a great listen and recommended for language nerds everywhere.
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- Dmitry
- 06-01-21
super interesting
I think any person will find this book super interesting. I love languages and this book enlarged my knowledge.
the audio narration is great although with minor mistakes
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- James A Barrett
- 04-27-17
Disappointing
I wanted so much more from this book. A few interesting bits but The author tries to be much too cute and many of the vignettes are lacking in substance. The narrator is overly dramatic for the subject matter but at least does a commendable job pronouncing words and phrases from the various languages. If you're going to still get this, it probably makes the most sense to listen and read. That way you get benefit of the sounds of the language in addition to the spelling. I did audio only and felt I probably missed out on some of it even thought that the narrator spelled out some of the words.
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-13-20
interesting book! pros and cons to the audiobook
the book is great!
pro to audiobook: great to hear the pronunciations
con to audiobook: big lists of alphabets and spellings are difficult to grasp
I think they did as good a job of the audiobook as they could
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- Mike Bender
- 08-15-19
Excellent narration of a difficult text
The narrator, George Backman, did a remarkable job with all the different language samples. This could have been a hard listen with a lesser narrator. Well done!
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- Zachary
- 02-03-17
Interesting linguistic trivia
Rather than advancing any big ideas, this book shares interesting vignettes about dozens of languages from English and German down to the smallest languages spoken in Europe.
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