The book Lingo, by Dutch linguist and journalist Gaston Dorren, is an enjoyable whirlwind tour of languages throughout Europe. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Book by Gaston Dorren”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette, and this is the time of year when we recommend books that we’ve loved to read and to give to other people.
And I have a favorite this year. It’s called Lingo, and it’s subtitled Around the World in 60 Languages.
So you know it’s already exciting, right?
It’s by Gaston Doren, who’s a Dutch guy.
He’s a linguist, and not only a linguist and a polyglot, he speaks five or six languages and reads several others.
But he’s also a journalist, which means that he takes you on this whirlwind tour of 60 different languages in Europe.
And he’s talking about syntax and grammar and vocabulary and usage.
But as a journalist, he has this wonderful gift for metaphor and simile and storytelling.
And along the way, you pick up great little words from other languages, like the fact that in Dutch, there’s a word outvien, which means to relax by visiting a windy place.
Outvien.
Yeah.
Who knew?
Yeah.
It means literally to walk in the wind.
But, you know, to go to maybe a place that’s windy or rainy and just vacation there, relax, take a walk in the rain.
That sounds nice, actually.
Isn’t that nice?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I also learned from reading this book that Latvian not only has a word for the day before yesterday, but it has a word for the day before the day before yesterday.
How cool is that?
So all these great little tidbits and some really cool, chewy stuff about language.
It’s called Lingo by Gaston Doran.
We’ll be recommending more books later in the show.
If you’ve got one to recommend, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send in an email to words@waywordradio.org.
