Here I present: Gaston Dorren, “BABEL: Around the World in 20 Languages”, 2018.
INTRODUCTION.
Half of the World’s population speaks twenty (20) languages.
One-quarter billion (250,000,000) people in the World suffer visual impairment. A significant number of the visual impaired are blind. For visual impaired written language reading is either “large-print” or Braille’.
Gaston Dorren, “BABEL: Around the World in Twenty (20) Languages, 2018 book lists languages by number of speakers.
From Vietnamese (#20) to English (#1) these speech communities are in the book. The “table of contents” is shown BELOW.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
20 Chapter Vietnamese | 85 million Linguistic mountaineering.
19 Chapter Korean | 85 million Sound and sensibility.
18 Chapter Tamil | 90 million A matter of life and death.
17 Chapter Turkish | 90 million Irreparably improved.
16 Chapter Javanese | 95 million Talking up, talking down.
15 Chapter Persian | 110 million Empire builders and construction workers.
14 Chapter Punjabi | 125 million The tone is the message.
13 Chapter Japanese | 130 million Linguistic gender apartheid.
12 Chapter Swahili | 135 million Africa’s nonchalant multilingualism.
11 Chapter German | 200 million An eccentric in Central Europe.
10 Chapter French | 250 million Death to la différence.
9 Chapter Malay | 275 million The one that won.
8 Chapter Russian | 275 million On being Indo-European.
7 Chapter Portuguese | 275 million Punching above its weight.
6 Chapter Bengali | 275 million World leaders in abugidas.
5 Chapter Arabic | 375 million A Concise Dictionary of Our Arabic.
4 Chapter Hindi-Urdu | 550 million Always something breaking us in two.
3 Chapter Spanish | 575 million ¿Ser or estar? That’s the question.
2 Chapter Mandarin | 1.3 billion The mythical Chinese script.
2b Chapter Japanese revisited A writing system lacking in system.
1 Chapter English | 1.5 billion A special lingua franca?
COMMENTS.
Chapter # 2b. Japanese revisited: a writing system lacking in system.
I thought this was my favorite chapter from the book. Compared to other languages, Japanese writing in non-systematic. Systematic is not what Kukai (774-835 AD) had in mind when he created the Japanese writing scripts.
