Title: Amusing and interesting
Product review: This book has a lot of amusing linguistic information in it. However a number of reviewers have pointed out that it has inaccuracies.It also has a strange stress on a limited number of languages. I can appreciate for instance the author's passion for Yiddish, and the little paragrah he writes on ways of cursing and insulting in Yiddish- but I wonder at the total absence of Hebrew and Aramaic in this work.There are little essays which are informative including one on languages which are threatened with extinction. Another discourses on the number of languages in the world. I was surprised to learn at how many different languages there are in Papua New Guinea.I found the little section on especially long- words, compounds of various kinds also interesting.This book has a lot of amusing information in, and should be treated as a work of entertainment not serious scholarship.
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