<p>An extremely funny history of so-called bad language by a European author. He asserts that Europeans try to get along but keep treading on each other's toes. In this tour of anger, exasperation, prejudice, irony &amp; loathing as expressed in some 20 European tongues, we learn that what is invective in one country is sweet talk in another. A single currency in Europe? Yes. A common language? Not on your life. The Guardian review states that the book's "His gently comic tone recognizes how funny, how much of a release, much bad language can be." "Entertaining, widely informed."</p>

Your Mother's Tongue : A Book of European Invective

Politics & Social Sciences

Stephen Burgen

Social Sciences

Phoenix

Your Mother's Tongue: A Book of European Invective

An extremely funny history of so-called bad language by a European author. He asserts that Europeans try to get along but keep treading on each other's toes. In this tour of anger, exasperation, prejudice, irony & loathing as expressed in some 20 European tongues, we learn that what is invective in one country is sweet talk in another. A single currency in Europe? Yes. A common language? Not on your life. The Guardian review states that the book's "His gently comic tone recognizes how funny, how much of a release, much bad language can be." "Entertaining, widely informed."

Your Mother's Tongue: A Book Of European Invective

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Diane Pub Co.

When Alex Nadal unexpectedly inherits his aunt's farm near Barcelona he has two problems, the first being that he is a piano player from New York with no knowledge of matters agricultural, and secondly, his aunt appears to have died twice: once at the end of the Spanish Civil War - or so Alex's father had always led him to believe - and again sixty years later, from a mysterious fall. Very soon after landing on Spanish soil it soon becomes apparent that Alex's is not a prodigal's return. From the moment he steps off the plane he is under pressure to go back to where he came from, but Alex is not a quitter and to him any problem can be solved if people are willing to discuss it. And sure enough, people are happy to talk - but not about Alex's immediate problem: anything but that. Yet Alex is not without allies, among them Carmen, the dark-eyed arts correspondent of the Barcelona daily, who seems heaven-sent. On the other hand there is Angel, doyen of hustlers and Carmen's ex-lover, who most certainly isn't. Together Alex and Carmen unearth a dossier of explosive information on events which happened in 1938 that forced his father to flee the family farm and in trying to find out why, Alex discovers that this is a country where there is no such thing as the past but a place where there is only unfinished business.

Walking the Lions

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Robinson Publishing

Bloody hell, verdammt noch mal. Eine europäische Schimpfkunde. (German Edition)

dtv.

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Books by Stephen Burgen