Europe in 60 languages

So Basque is an ergative language! Well, I never. I couldn’t have told you that a week ago. I even know now what that means (more or less). And, well… so much for Basque. Moving along, then… In Lingo, Gaston Dorren speeds around Europe, giving each of his chosen 60-odd languages three or four pages’ attention before striding off again. Brisk doesn’t begin to describe it. Each language is introduced by means of one quirk, or in a simple picture sharpened by viewing through one particular historic/grammatical/circumstantial prism — the ideology that drives Sweden’s pronoun wars, say, or why Spaniards always seem to be talking so quickly, or Ossetian’s peculiar position as sole European representative of the Iranian language group. And how on earth did Scots Gaelic end up with so many silent vowels? And then onto the next…

But if you believe Umberto Eco, ‘The language of Europe is translation.’ And certainly much of what’s revealing in Lingo is to be found not in the narratives or mechanics of individual languages but in the interface between them, in their familial relations and the friction whenever they attempt to communicate. Languages influence each other by invasion (military or cultural) or immigration, by topographical contiguity, or quirks of historical chance; but also, of course, through the bonds of close family relations — the sprawling family descended from the mighty eight-case PIE, Proto-Indo-European.

An alertness to common ancestries means that there are many etymological pleasures to be had from this book, if you’re so inclined — like the kinship between the Romanian ‘leave’ and the Portuguese ‘arrive’, from a common root word meaning ‘fold’, which has reached its modern descendants, respectively, through the idea of packing up tents before you leave, or furling up sails as you arrive.