I always wondered how many languages do I need to learn to talk to X% of the population. This book is based on the same premise. While technically there may be cases where you count people more than once, I think it is a good motivation to analyze and discuss diverese aspects of the languages with the largest number of speakers.

At some point the book was a bit too technical, in others it was rambling about issues that were not directly related to the language in that chapter, but overall I think it was entertaning and I learned several things about Urdu, Turkish and Persian, among others.

This was a very enjoyable and interesting book. It doesn't go really deep, but it's not intended to. It is a great introduction to languages for a non-specialist. I have been a language hobbyist myself for over forty years, and I still found the book worthwhile, and learned a few things I hadn't know. I would recommend it to all.

My kind of book - linguistic dabbling in 20 major languages! The only way it could be better is if the author dabbled in dead languages as well!

I read this with an eye to thinking about the World Lit class I'm teaching in the fall, that this might help me reflect some on experiences that are not English or Western, even. And this was mostly successful at that. It wrongfooted me a little-- the first chapter really did break down Vietnamese, the first of 20 languages that Dorren tackles-- because later chapters are more topical than that, so that the chapter on Portuguese is more broadly about colonialism than it is about Portuguese. This is the pattern of most chapters-- the languages display an interesting feature or history or orthography that tees up something Dorren wants to talk about for a dozen or twenty pages. This doesn't make it less than interesting, and you really can't do much with a language in that small a space. And most of the chapters and topics were interesting and well-developed.

This series of short essays means that the book lacks a clear propulsive spine, though. This is better a book beside the bed to read before bed than something you'd tear through on a train.

An enjoyable jaunt through the twenty most spoken languages in the world with plenty of fun facts that will no doubt get me in trouble as potentially knowing less or more about a language than I actually do.

The book delivered what I had hoped for: easily consumable but nuanced descriptions of twenty of the most commonly spoken languages on the planet. What I wasn't expecting was for it to be so funny. I thoroughly enjoyed the author's appreciation for language and his dry wit.

Each chapter has a surprisingly varied tone. Initially I found this unpleasant, but over time I appreciated the variations. Some chapters focus on the language's social history, some focus on a linguistic quirk, some are brief or lightweight, some are lengthy or linguistics-heavy. I appreciated the author using whatever method seemed best suited to what they found interesting to share about the language, rather than trying to fit all the languages into one mold.

While I agree with the complaints of other readers, namely that some languages seem to get short shrift, I feel I can't possibly give less than 5 stars to a book that I highlighted as extensively as I did this text. (>100, although I tried to be sparing with what I made public).

It was an easy book to pick up and put down. I read it in short bits over several weeks, most of it over a vacation. I suspect frustrated readers were reading it in one or two sessions or otherwise less casually.

I will say that I was surprised by how few sources were listed at the end of the book. I’m hoping that the author ultimately used more and only listed their primary sources. I did feel comforted that when I asked a native speaker of a language - and native resident of the culture described - about details I found surprising, they confirmed that the author was correct. (They in fact said almost the exact same thing, word for word.)

I appreciate that the author is not a native speaker of the language in which he wrote the book. His personal multilingual experience, I think, provided a richer perspective.

Really enjoyable survey! It might have put me off trying to learn Limburgish though

The perfect combination of always interesting, often fascinating, funny, playful, and irreverent. I learned a lot and had a very fun time doing so!

Interesting book about the world’s current top 20 languages, how history, politics, and geography have shaped their usage and how time and chance has developed their linguistic features. The book is structured with a chapter on each language, highlighting a specific unique element of that language.

For example, the last chapter discussed the status of English as the current global lingua franca with an uncertain future. It may be molded in the future by a simplified globalized English which would remove unnecessary synonyms, grammatical oddities, and spelling variations. Alternatively English could be splintered by regional variants like Singlish (like what happened to Latin’s transformation to Romance languages). English could also be replaced at the top by the comparatively more difficult Mandarin (current #2) as a result of China’s growing influence. And another option still would be that artificial intelligence and technology could continue making strides in instant translations, resulting in everyone just speaking only in their mother tongue… although complications exist here too. What will happen to English? Only time will tell!

Here’s a countdown of the top 20…

20 Vietnamese | 85 million
19 Korean | 85 million
18 Tamil | 90 million
17 Turkish | 90 million
16 Javanese | 95 million
15 Persian | 110 million
14 Punjabi | 125 million
13 Japanese | 130 million
12 Swahili | 135 million
11 German | 200 million
10 French | 250 million
9 Malay | 275 million
8 Russian | 275 million
7 Portuguese | 275 million
6 Bengali | 275 million
5 Arabic | 375 million
4 Hindi-Urdu | 550 million
3 Spanish | 575 million
2 Mandarin | 1.3 billion
1 English | 1.5 billion

Great chapter diversity

Chapters are written in a variety of styles to keep things interesting. I love the way the author relates lexical phenomena to English.