Monday, November 10, 2008

Gifts for Book Lovers- Biting the Wax Tadpole

Book Count: 88

For: the armchair traveler, language lover

Biting the Wax Tadpole: Confessions of a Language Fanatic By: Elizabeth Little
Non-Fiction, travel, grammar, cultures 180 pages 2007

This book is about all different languages: current ones, dead ones, even made up ones. It explores the different rules of grammar and speech around the world as well are what language tells you about the people who speak it. It includes lots of fun sidebars on words and language. One of these points out the way that the royal we of kings and queens has over time become the editorial we of blogs, to which WE would just like to remind readers that we have been using for around 15 years now, long before blogs became popular. So you could say that we started it (even if it isn’t true, numbers don’t lie and all that.) As you may know the title referrers to the urban legend that when Coca-Cola first came to China they called the pop the characters “Ko ka ko la” which means “bit the wax tadpole.” This book goes over the truth behind this story and other translation issues in it as well.

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