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An enjoyable book of language trivia. You'll learn why French has all those silent letters, if it's reallytrue that Spanish is spoken faster than other languages or if it just sounds that way, and whether that oft-referenced language (Sami) really does have 20 unique words for snow.

I really liked the end of each chapter which included words from each language that are loanwords in English, many of which migrated through one or even multiple other languages on their way. Along with that is a single word from that language that is particularly unique. It makes you realize how imprecise many concepts are in English, some requiring entire phrases to convey.

The book isn't that long and the writing is pretty fast-paced, but at times too fast. I found I had to re-read some sections to follow them. The author is a linguistic journalist so he mostly explains concepts for the lay audience, but a few sidebars introducing concepts with their background might have still been helpful. Another aspect I struggled with is all the political events that had major effects on the language evolution. I'm definitely an ignorant American regarding most of the history in this book, so it was a little tougher to follow and relate to those sections.

The chapters are pretty inconsistent and some were much more interesting than others. I feel like the less interesting third could have been cut, but it is amazing the sheer number of languages still being used in contemporary times in Europe, even if only by a small number of people, so my recommendation is to read the first part of each chapter and just skip past those that don't strike your fancy.