English is the world language, except that most of the world doesn’t speak it―only one in five people does. Dorren calculates that to speak fluently with half of the world’s 7.4 billion people in their mother tongues, you would need to know no fewer than twenty languages. He sets out to explore these top twenty world languages, which range from the familiar (French, Spanish) to the surprising (Malay, Javanese, Bengali). Babel whisks the reader on a delightful journey to every continent of the world, tracing how these world languages rose to greatness while others fell away and showing how speakers today handle the foibles of their mother tongues. Whether showcasing tongue-tying phonetics or elegant but complicated writing scripts, and mind-bending quirks of grammar, Babel vividly illustrates that mother tongues are like nations: each has its own customs and beliefs that seem as self-evident to those born into it as they are surprising to the outside world. Among many other things, Babel will teach you why modern Turks can’t read books that are a mere 75 years old, what it means in practice for Russian and English to be relatives, and how Japanese developed separate “dialects” for men and women. Dorren lets you in on his personal trials and triumphs while studying Vietnamese in Hanoi, debunks ten widespread myths about Chinese characters, and discovers that Swahili became the lingua franca in a part of the world where people routinely speak three or more languages. Witty, fascinating and utterly compelling, Babel will change the way you look at and listen to the world and how it speaks. Praise for Babel : “Fascinating . . . Dorren has an eye for what makes languages stand out from the field . . . In the hands of a less gifted author, some of the material in Babel could come across as dry or intimidating. But Dorren (as you might expect) has a way with language, and an arch sense of humor . . . Babel is an endlessly interesting book, and you don’t have to have any linguistic training to enjoy it . . . As joyful as it is educational, and above all, it’s just so much fun to read.” ―NPR “A fascinating guide and a celebration of linguistic diversity and bilingualism, both sadly underappreciated in English-speaking nations.” ― Guardian “A linguist and journalist takes readers on a global tour of the world’s top 20 languages, from Mandarin, English, and Arabic to Swahili, Tamil, and Malay. How did these tongues come to prominence and what others are dying out because of them? Dorren explores the culture and quirks of each language with infectious curiosity.” ― Newsday “Eye-opening and thoroughly entertaining . . . [Dorren] is wonderful company: chatty, informative, enthusiastic . . . Babel is a story not of nouns and consonants, but of empires and continents. Language is power. Sometimes it is a matter of life, lust, and death.” ― Times (UK) “An accessible and entertaining dive into the most commonly spoken languages in the world . . . An excellent choice if you want to learn another language but can’t decide which one . . . Accessible to longtime language scholars and casual readers alike; a delightful collection of twenty small windows to much larger worlds.” ― BookBrowse “ Babel ―fittingly for a book on language―is about more than numbers. Dorren takes a clever approach . . . He doesn’t just give an overview of the languages discussed; he explores a theme or element in each one, sometimes drawing broader conclusions on language as a whole . . . Smart, punchy prose.” ― Irish Independent “Hugely readable . . . Dorren is both an intimidatingly gifted linguist and a wonderfully eloquent writer. You couldn’t wish for a better guide to the wonders of the world’s bewildering array of tongues.” ― Mail on Sunday “Dorren expertly unpacks the baffling exceptions and structural oddities of the world’s 20 most-spoken languages in his delightful latest . . . Dorren always succeeds in sharing his delight at the intricacies and compromises of human communication . . . Whether he is debunking common misunderstandings about Chinese characters or detailing the rigid caste distinctions ossified in Javanese, Dorren educates and fascinates. Word nerds of every strain will enjoy this wildly entertaining linguistic study.” ― Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Dorren offers an intriguing tasting-menu of the major standardized languages . . . An engaging and informative whirlwind tour of how major world languages are created, used and changed.” ― Shelf Awareness “In surveying this score of tongues, Dorren teaches readers a great deal about how languages survive, evolve, and spread . . . As he shifts focus from language chapter to language chapter, Dorren delves into social and political dynamics affecting speech and writing . . . A fascinating foray into global linguistics.” ― Booklist “Dorren proves to be a genial, fascinating guide to the modes, manners, and curiosities of the most-spoken languages in the wo