Your Mother's Tongue

by Stephen Burgen

Your Mother's Tongue : A Book of European Stephen Your Mother's Tongue : A Book of European FIRST First Edition Thus, First Printing. Not price-clipped. Published by Phoenix, 2001. Octavo. Paperback. Book is very good with sticker residue on the back cover, light toning of the pages, a light crease on the beck cover, and light shelf wear. Seller 360270 Literature

Genres: Language

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Hunted Snark · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful resource for anyone wanting to insult someone in 20 different European languages.

But also ... it reveals the absurdity of bad language by what feels like (but clearly isn't) an exhaustive compare and contrast across cultures.

We discover that taboos are stupid, flimsy and lie, but they are also extremely powerful.
A fascinating, amusing and highly readable journey.

Or a bunch of filth ... just depending on where you're from.

[Magda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rereading it after 30 years, still witty and fiendishly funny.

[Yolanda Díaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Es un libro ameno y divertido que es fácil de leer, pero... dudo bastante de su valor didáctico, ya que no reconozco muchas de las cosas que el autor (periodista inglés) dice que son habituales en España. Y no es por haber ido a un colegio de monjas, sino porque no las he oído jamás, al menos en las zonas de España donde he estado. ¿Cómo fiarme, pues, de las cosas que, según el autor, se dicen en otros países?

[Darkpool · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have been wanting to get my hands on a copy of this since Marguerite's husband read us extracts over the breakfast table on the ferry to Hamburg in 1997. Thoroughly enjoyed finally reading it for myself. I did feel it lost momentum towards the end, and I got distracted by various fiction books before I finally managed to read the last few chapters.

[Flávio]

A good insult is worth a thousand kicks in the nuts